The New American - April 1, 2013

Tax Credit or Income Transfer? The Seventeenth: The Worst of All Amendments?
April 1, 2013
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Prescription for Murder

The media and political drone is deafening:
Mass murders are caused by guns,
especially military-type, high-capacity
guns. But since such guns have been
available about 100 years, well have to
look elsewhere such as at medications.
(March 18, 2013, 48pp) TNA130318
Fiscal Debt: Charging Ahead

Spending, deficits, and debt are daily
topics in the news and in politics, but
despite the rhetoric, it is very unlikely
government will cut spending and change
course. It should. (March 4, 2013, 48pp)
TNA130304
Just Say No: Sheriffs and Legislators

Standing Together Against Federal
Attacks on Our Rights
Federal government officials, especially
President Barack Obama, are working to
undo Second Amendment protections,
but state and local officials are planning to
nullify any anti-gun efforts in their states.
( February 18, 2013, 48pp) TNA130218
False Solutions to Gun Violence

In the rush to end gun violence, both
the pro-gun and anti-gun crowds are
recommending solutions to violence that
amount to unconstitutional people control.
(April 1, 2013, 48pp) TNA130401
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Globesity: How Globalists...
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Globalists are using the problem to
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(February 4, 2013, 48pp) TNA130204
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Vol. 29, No. 7
April 1, 2013
Cover Story
guns
Cover by Joseph W. Kelly
10 False Solutions to Gun Violence
by William F. Jasper In the rush to issue ideas to stop mass

shootings, both gun control groups and pro-gun groups backed
plans that can be described as unconstitutional people control.
Features
17
economy
Library of Congress
17 Soaking the Rich Hurts Rich and Poor Alike
by Bob Adelmann Time and again, when taxes have been raised
on the rich, the poor suffered the greatest detriment. And when
taxes were lowered, the poor saw most of the benefit.
taxes
23 Tax Credit or Income Transfer?
by Laurence M. Vance It is a good thing when taxes are reduced.

But when refundable tax credits provide taxpayers with more money
than they paid in, thats a subsidy, not a tax cut.
23
book review
29 Origins of the Law
AP Images
by James D. Heiser This three-volume set analyzes the origins of

the law, including whether laws come from God or man, and how
modern law compares and contrasts to early law.
History Past and Perspective
35 The Seventeenth: The Worst of All Amendments?

by Jack Kenny The 17th Amendment, putting the election of U.S.
senators in the citizens hands, instead of the state legislatures, was
meant to empower citizens. It had the opposite effect.
29
THE LAST WORD
44 Narrow Is the Way to Defend Our Freedoms

by Jack Kenny
35
Departments
5 Letters to the Editor 33 The Goodness of America
6 Inside Track
40 Exercising the Right
9 QuickQuotes
41 Correction, Please!
COVER Design by Joseph W. Kelly
Foundations: Their Power and Influence
Renee A. Wormser examines some of Americas most powerful tax-exempt

foundations; their actions, as opposed to their stated purposes; the
interlocking groups of men who run them; and their influence on the
country at large. First published in 1958. (1993ed, 412pp, pb, $19.95) BKFPI
Dollars & $ense
Dollars & $ense, by John F. McManus, is an excellent tool for teaching

Americans about the nature of money and how to solve inflation. Given the
current economic crisis, it is a must-see!
Sleeved DVD (2008, 48min, 1/$1.00; 11-20/$0.90ea; 21-49/$0.80ea; 50-99/$0.75ea;
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The Law
Frederic Bastiat, in his classic expos of socialism and communism as lawful

plunder, explains the fundamental principles involved in determining the
proper scope of government. It explains socialist fallacies. (2007ed, 74pp, pb,
$4.95) BKL
TITLE
Price
Author James Perloff exposes the subversive roots and global

designs of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Passed off
as a think-tank, this group is the power behind the throne,
with hundreds of top government officials drawn from its
ranks. The book traces CFR activity from the Wilson to
Reagan administrations. (2011ed, 273pp, pb, $10.95) BKSOP
Man, Freedom, & Government
Enhanced remake of Ezra Taft Bensons 1968 filmstrip classic.

This DVD provides a roadmap for restoring our freedoms
and rights.
Sleeved DVD (2005, 24min, 1/$1.00ea; 11-20/$0.90ea;
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The Creature From Jekyll Island
G. Edward Griffin unmasks the secrets behind the

manipulation of our nations money supply by providing an
insiders look at how the Federal Reserve came into being and
how it controls the value of the dollar. (2010, 5th ed, 608pp, pb,
$22.95) BKCFJI
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Publisher
John F. McManus
Editor
Gary Benoit
Senior Editor
William F. Jasper
Associate Editor
Kurt Williamsen
Copy Editor
John T. Larabell
Foreign Correspondent
Alex Newman
Contributors
Bob Adelmann Dave Bohon
Raven Clabough Selwyn Duke
Thomas R. Eddlem Brian Farmer
Christian Gomez Larry Greenley
Gregory A. Hession, J.D.
Ed Hiserodt William P. Hoar
Jack Kenny R. Cort Kirkwood
Patrick Krey, J.D. Warren Mass
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Fr. James Thornton,
Joe Wolverton II, J.D.
Art Director
Joseph W. Kelly
Graphic Designer
Katie Carder
Research
Bonnie M. Gillis
PR/Marketing Manager
Bill Hahn
Advertising/Circulation Manager
Julie DuFrane
Printed in the U.S.A. ISSN 0885-6540

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Call 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Incidents and Accidents

Regarding the Goodness article entitled
Brooklyn Woman Saves Two (February 4 issue), perhapsThe New American
readers would be interested in the rest
of the story concerning the Brooklyn
woman who saved two men in the New
York City subway. The woman featured
in the article, Doreen Winkler, is a close
friend, who related the details of her story
to me immediately after the event.
When she heard the first man, Jack Simmons, fall onto the tracks, she recalled the
image of Ki-Suck Han that had appeared
on the front page of the New York Post a
number of weeks previously.Doreen had
not witnessed Hans death on the subway
tracks, but like many New Yorkers, she
had seen the gruesome photo of him looking up from the tracks seconds before he
was killed by a train.That photo was taken
by a photojournalist who was in the station, though some distance from Han.The
appearance of that death photo on the front
page caused much discussion, raising the
question why no one had helped him.
(The photographer later stated he knew he
wasnt close enough to rescue Han and, in
fact, had flashed his camera to try to warn
the trains conductor.Only after printing
the photo did the photographer realize the
picture he had taken accidentally.)
With that awful image in mind, Doreen
responded as she did for Simmons. She
called for the other good Samaritan, later
identified as Vincent Samuel, to climb
down and rescue Simmons, promising him
that she would help him lift Simmons back
onto the platform. As it developed, Samuel
fell on his back on the tracks, and in getting up, he realized the train was coming
into the station. That was when Doreen
summoned the strength to help lift both
men up to the platform.
Doreen was honored by the Brooklyn
Borough president for her actions but, as
she requested, only on the condition that
Samuel, a Queens, New York resident, be
honored too.
Finally, it should be noted that Doreen

is a permanent U.S. resident, having been
born and raised in the former East Germany.Her father was a firefighter, who taught
her to do what is right to help others in
such situations.
Anthony E. Shaw
Scarsdale, New York
Sequester Sewage
Wake up and dont be bamboozled by all
the facts about the sequestration costing
the United States all these jobs due to the
loss of operating income! All the sequester would do is lower the amount of the
increase these departments have for their
budgets. These departments are still getting more money this year than they got
last year! We are talking about $86 billion,
I think it is. The U.S. government borrows
roughly $85 billion every 28 days! For
each dollar the government spends, more
than 45 cents has to be borrowed.
Senator Rand Paul stated that the U.S.
government has spent $100 billion it cant
even account for. It does not know where
it went! Moreover, the government has
spent money to send comedians to India,
millions to study about how goldfish interact and why an artificial squirrel wiggling
its tail scares a rattlesnake, and on and on
about such intellectual things!
It appears to me that a lot of our elected
elite highly educated individuals dont
seem to care much that most of the laws
they pass are not really helping the citizens
or the country! We are inundated with laws
about laws, yet most of them are not enforced on the government itself. Remember
Fast and Furious where the government
allowed guns to be purchased illegally and
given to the drug cartels in Mexico, which
then used the guns to kill hundreds of Mexicans and our own Border Patrol people. Our
responsible people have done nothing
about seeing that justice is done.
John L. Galbreath
Mt. Sterling, Ohio
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Inside Track
Anyone boarding an aircraft should feel maybe only a teeny tiny
bit safer than if there were no TSA at all.
The author of those words should know: He (or she) used to
be a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screener at
Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey. An
article by this anonymous former screener in the New York Post
for March 10 paints a devastating portrait of an agency that employs incompetents, enforces arbitrary regulations, and engages
in what security expert Bruce Schneier calls security theater:
public actions taken in the name of security that actually do nothing to make people safer.
In fact, the author points out, one neednt even have a highschool diploma or GED to get a job as a screener. These are the
employees who could never keep a job in the private sector. I
wouldnt trust them to walk my dog. Most screeners, according
to the author, are just there for the paycheck $15 an hour to
start, plus tons of overtime filling in for no-shows and the
benefits, including generous amounts of vacation and sick time
and a near impossibility of being fired unless they get caught
stealing from passengers.
Another benefit (for male screeners): a lot of ogling of female
passengers. The author advises women to cover up when you
get to the airport. These guys are checking you out constantly.
Supervisors, it seems, care little about what screeners do as
long as they dont chew gum on duty.
The former screener states that there are a few delusional
zealots who believe theyre keeping America safe by taking your
snow globe, your 2-inch pocket knife, your 4-ounce bottle of
AP Images
TSA Is a Complete Joke, Says Former Airport Screener
shampoo and performing invasive pat-downs on your kids. The

rest know their job is a complete joke. Indeed, notes the author,
when the TSA does make good hires, these people just dont last
because they can get a normal job.
As bad as all of this is, it might be worth enduring if it actually
made air travel safer. Unfortunately, it doesnt. Prohibited items
and probably prohibited people get by the TSA frequently.
We always said its not a question of if terrorists get through
its a question of when. Our feeling is nothings happened
because they havent wanted it to happen. Were not any big deterrent. Its all for show.
Lies and Maximum Pain: Strategy for Winning the Sequester Debate
President Obama and his administration have revealed their strategy on how to win the sequestration debate: exaggerate and lie
about the impact of the cuts, which really only serve to slow the
growth of federal spending, and maximize the pain caused by
those cuts.
Among the tactics apparently used by at least part of the
Obama administration is to make the public as annoyed with
the results of the sequester cuts as possible, if a leaked e-mail
message from the Department of Agriculture is to be believed.
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles
Brown told his departments employees, in an internal e-mail
dated March 4 and obtained by the Washington Times, We have
gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever
else that APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24
states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry,
unless they provide funding to cover the costs. So it is our
opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to
make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact
would be.
In February, ABC News compiled a list of 57 nearly apocalyptic predictions by the Obama administration and its Democratic allies in Congress, including greater damage from severe
6
storms, locust plagues against farmers crops, more forest fires,

opening up federal prisons and setting criminals free, and even
the federal government leaving the nations nuclear weapons
unprotected.
Most of the predictions turned out to be either wildly exaggerated or outright lies, however. The White House campaign
of terror against the sequestration has had media fact-checkers
working overtime, correcting their exaggerations, and Politico.
com gathered ratings from the Washington Posts Fact Checker
and Politifact.com, and found that they earned Mostly False or
worse from both on six major claims.
Other Obama administration lies include Education Secretary
Arne Duncans claim that teachers were already getting pink slips
from the sequester, the presidents claim that federal prosecutors
will have to close cases and let criminals go, and claims about
childrens Head Start and vaccination programs and senior citizens Meals on Wheels program.
President Obama has defined the sequester as using a meat
cleaver. But the reality is that the cuts are closer to exfoliation,
if they are implemented so as to minimize their impact. And
with the Agriculture Departments e-mail, that if looks like
a big if.
THE NEW AMERICAN April 1, 2013
Black Business Leader: Obama Tyrannical, Borderline Communist

Harry C. Alford, co-founder and president/CEO of the National
Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), created a national sensation during a February 25 interview in which he accused President Barack Obama of acting like former Soviet dictator Josef
Stalin and said the presidents executive orders are tyrannical
and a violation of the Constitution. Moreover, he added, Obamas
economic policies are borderline communist. The video went
viral after being posted on a number of sites on March 1.
Alford expanded on those remarks in subsequent interviews,
including an interview on March 4 with Andrea Tantaros of Fox
News and pjmedia.com, in which he charged that President
Obama wants government in everything and anything. Alford
said he now regrets supporting Obamas presidential bid in 2008.
He allowed himself to be swept up with the candidates rhetoric
of hope, the media hype, and racial solidarity. He made a fool
out of me and a lot of other people, says Alford.
When asked about Obamas performance and policies concerning the economy, Alford didnt hold back:
politician with a good ground game and shrewd team, he said,

paying homage to Obamas political skills. But he confessed to
having succumbed to what he said was the tribal instinct:
[It was] the timing, the aura of history, that America could
have a black president. From slavery to Jim Crow to now we
can hold the highest office in the land. People had to do it
they went for it, including myself. I saw a black president,
and thats wrong.
Have his criticisms of the Obama administration caused Alford any
backlash from NBCC members? On the contrary, he says his members are supportive, and the NBCC is growing. When people get
scared, they go to church, he said. When businesses get scared,
they join the Chamber. And Obamas policies are causing all businesses, including black-owned businesses, to get very scared.
He doesnt have a clue. Hes never had a business. Hes never

had a real job. He doesnt understand how it all works....
Hes bad, hes bad. And I supported him the first time around
because I had hopes, because hes black. Shame on me!
AP Images
During the March 4 interview Andrea Tantaros asked Alford

to explain how he, a highly educated, successful businessman,
had been so completely fooled by Obama. The guy is a shrewd
AP Images
Wall Street Journal Attacks Rand Paul Filibuster
Senator Rand Pauls March 6 filibuster during the nomination of

John Brennan for CIA director, aimed at discovering whether the
administration believes it can use drone strikes to kill American
citizens, potentially on American soil and without trial, brought
plaudits from across the political spectrum, as well as criticism
from the Wall Street Journal and other neoconservative pundits.
Hes apparently serious, though his argument isnt, a March 7
Wall Street Journal editorial concluded of Senator Pauls demands.
The White House appears to approve of strikes against American citizens, with White House Press Spokesman Jay Carney telling the press on February 5, We conduct those strikes because
they are necessary to mitigate ongoing actual threats, to stop
plots, prevent future attacks, and, again, save American lives.

These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise.
Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement March 7essentially saying the administration wouldnt kill a U.S. citizen unless he
were designated an enemy combatant by the administration!
Mr. Holder is right, even if he doesnt explain the law very
well, the Wall Street Journal opined after Rand Pauls filibuster.
The president, the Journal countered, can order the assassination
of U.S. citizens without trial whenever he deems it necessary:
Mr. Holder is right that the U.S. could have targeted (say) U.S.
citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had he continued to live in Virginia. The
U.S. killed him in Yemen before he could kill more Americans.
At the heart of the issue is the right of the president to be able to
designate enemy combatants in the absence of a congressional
declaration of war or authorization of force. Many Americans
are unaware that the U.S. Constitution delegates war powers to
Congress, not the president.
Even if the Constitution had authorized the president (or Congress, for that matter) to target and kill an American citizen
without trial which it didnt the Fifth Amendment would
have changed this. The Fifth Amendment stipulates that no
person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law. n
7
Extended Inside Track
Heidi Sheppard
Leftist SPLC Bemoans Growing Influence of The John Birch Society
he largely discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, a selfstyled civil rights group based in Alabama and described
by critics as ultra-leftist, released its latest so-called Intelligence
Report in early March, warning of an alleged surge in right-ofcenter organizations concerned about an out-of-control federal
government. Among the prominent Patriot groups attacked
in the SPLC report was The John Birch Society, with an entire
article about the JBS devoted largely to complaining about the
liberty-minded organizations supposed growing influence in the
conservative movement and the Republican Party.
In its report on the JBS, entitled Bringing Back Birch, SPLC
commentator Don Terry, perhaps trying to add some credibility to
his piece, does help dispel some of the more absurd accusations
hurled at the organization over the last five decades by its critics that it is secretly racist, or anti-Semitic, for example, both
easily debunked. JBS CEO Art Thompson explained to Terry in
an interview that members who are found to harbor racist or antiSemitic views are immediately expelled from the society.
However, the SPLC report goes on to mock the group in a halfbaked attempt to discredit its mission using sarcasm. The archconservative John Birch Society is still waging its Cold War-era
crusade against the Red menace and American insiders who, in
the societys view, are hell-bent on handing the country over to
the socialists at the U.N., the writer notes, apparently oblivious
to the fact that communism and tyranny are flourishing throughout much of the world, even as elements of the American establishment continue their bid to erode U.S. sovereignty.
At least some Americans appear to be buying what the
Birchers are selling, the report continues. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney raised more than a few eyebrows
during the 2012 campaign when he said that Russia not Iran,
not North Korea was, without question, Americas No. 1
geopolitical foe. Anxiety about Russia is straight out of the John
Birch Society playbook of fear. It should be noted that, despite
the SPLCs insinuations, Romneys positions were largely at
odds with the constitutional values promoted by the JBS, as The
8
New American documented

extensively.
The SPLC makes clear in
its reports that it is not happy
with the societys steadfast
and increasingly successful opposition to the UNs
Agenda 21, a so-called
sustainable development
scheme. The civil rights
group also suggested that
JBS-led educational efforts
have resulted in the national
GOP adopting a plank in its
platform opposing the global
scheme as a socialist and
communist threat, and
have led to state laws banning the controversial UN program in places such as Alabama.
Indeed, bipartisan opposition to Agenda 21 is surging nationwide.
Now, it seems likely that the radical rights growth will continue, said SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok in the report, deceptively implying that concern over lawless government and
politicians seeking to strip Americans fundamental rights was
linked to the fact that Obama is half black. What the SPLC fails
to mention is that the vast majority of Patriot groups, including
the JBS, have supported the Constitution and opposed attacks on
it all along it has nothing to do with the race of the current
occupant of the White House, a matter that concerns only collectivists and race-mongers interested in superficial characteristics
such as skin color.
The SPLC, which is known for trying to smear its political
and ideological foes using hysteria and deception, also likes to
claim that it is under attack from the far right. In reality, some
of its most vocal critics are on the Left. Even prominent civil
rights attorney Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center
for Human Rights, for example, has criticized the SPLC and its
co-founder Morris Dees.
Morris Dees is a con man and fraud, as I and others have
observed, Bright explained in a 2007 letter. He has taken advantage of naive, well-meaning people some of moderate or low
incomes who believe his pitches and give to his $175-million
operation. He has spent most of what they have sent him to raise
still more millions, pay high salaries, and promote himself.
However, despite garnering some attention from the mainstream media, with each new report, the SPLC becomes more
and more irrelevant and discredited, according to analysts. This
year, even the establishment press has helped expose that fact.
Indeed, as Granny Warriors leader Linda Hunnicutt, 74, suggested to CNN March 5, being on an SPLC Patriot list is seen
as an honor proof that an organization is working effectively
to preserve freedom. Trying to link loyal, liberty-loving, patriotic
Americans with true hate groups, conservatives and libertarians
say, is now starting to very publicly backfire. n
A Democrat Supported Rand Pauls Filibuster

I believe there is a new political movement emerging in this country
thats shaking free of party moorings. Americans want a better balance
between protecting our security and protecting our liberty.
The only member of the Democratic Party to participate in the filibuster
begun by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Ron
Wyden
Sequestration Draws Varied Reviews

But if sequestration is dumb, its even dumber not to cut spending at all.
Responding to President Obamas blunt assessment of sequestration (something he himself proposed)
as dumb, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) targeted increased federal spending as an even worse
example of stupidity.
AP Images
QuickQuotes
Bill
Clinton
Bill Clinton Urges Legitimacy for Adam to Marry Steve

I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor, and
the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this
struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense
of Marriage Act (DOMA).
He signed DOMA into law in 1996, but Bill Clinton now wants to have
same-sex marriage recognized throughout the nation.
In Spain, Apes Are Protected While Abortion Targets Human Infants

It just doesnt make any sense that the law protects the lives of several animal species and yet does not
apply to human beings.
The president of Spains Right to Life Association, Ignacio Arsuaga, noted that Spain has laws protecting several species of animals from abortion and fetal experimentation but also has a law permitting
abortion of humans.
Former CIA Official Believes Newly Appointed Cuban Vice President Faces Huge Hurdles
The record of the Cuban revolution is littered with names of people who were thought to be Number
3 or 2 and all of them fell by the wayside. Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez will have to watch his back.
Brian Latel, a former CIA agent who has long monitored what has occurred in Cuba, commented on
the naming by Raul Castro of Cubas new vice president.
He Was Told Never to Acknowledge Drone Program
When I went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the first things they told me was
youre not even to acknowledge the drone program. Our denial of the existence of the program when
its obviously happening undermines peoples confidence overall in the decisions that their government
makes.
Now employed by MSNBC, Robert Gibbs served as President Obamas
press secretary during 2009-2011.
Hagel Squeezes Through to Win
Nomination as Secretary of Defense
Our men and women in uniform and their families must never doubt that
their leaders first priority is them.
Winning the nomination by only a 58-41 Senate vote (the tightest approval
vote ever for the post), former Nebraska senator and veteran CFR member
Chuck Hagel sought to convey the right impression for service personnel. n
Compiled by John F. McManus
Chuck
Hagel
AP Images
AP Images
Congressional Candidate Doesnt Want to Be Linked to His Father

If I were riding Ted Turners coattails, would I be living in South Carolina and running as a Republican?
Vying with numerous others for the South Carolina congressional seat
vacated when Tim Scott won appointment to a Senate seat, Ted Turner,
Jr. does not want to be identified with his father.
guns
In the rush to issue ideas to stop mass shootings, both gun control groups and pro-gun
groups backed plans that can be described as unconstitutional people control.
by William F. Jasper
resident Obama ignited a major political conflagration with his January 16 address to the nation regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School
shooting that took 26 lives in Connecticut
the month before. He proposed what he
10
said are common-sense steps that would

prevent gun violence and protect our
children and our communities from tragic
mass shootings.
President Obamas program, entitled
Now Is the Time, outlined a series of 23
executive actions he said he would take
to make our schools safer and enhance
public safety. Predictably, the major focus

of his program is aimed at enacting more
legislation and implementing more regulation through executive orders that would
further restrict the rights of American citizens to keep and bear arms.
And just as predictably, the militant
anti-gun lobby was quick to complain that
the presidents plan didnt go far enough.

Gun rights advocates, on the other hand,
immediately (and appropriately) denounced the presidents program as a blatant attack on the Second Amendment. It
would, they pointed out, endanger one of
the most important rights enjoyed by lawabiding Americans, while doing nothing to
stem the death and mayhem wrought by
violent criminals.
However, in their rush to challenge
President Obamas infringement of the
Second Amendment, many of his opponents have unwittingly fallen into the trap
of supporting other aspects of his program,
specifically those falling under the labels
of mental health and school safety.
Some gun rights advocates also endorsed
President Obamas appeal for more federal funding of local police. Most appalling in this regard was the response of the
National Rifle Association, which decided
to practice some one-upsmanship with the
president by calling on the federal government to immediately fund a vast new
program to put armed police in every
school. These proposals represent a huge
assault on other parts of our Constitution,
most particularly, the 10th Amendment,
which emphatically restates our Republics key founding principle that the federal government has only those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution.
Gun rights advocates who think they
can preserve the Second Amendment
while sacrificing other parts of the Constitution are sadly mistaken; it must be
defended in toto or it will be lost in toto.
Among President Obamas many proposals that are drawing the most fire from
the pro-gun side of the aisle are banning
so-called military-style assault weapons, banning high-capacity ammunition
magazines holding more than 10 rounds,
and requiring criminal background
checks for all firearms sales, including
between private individuals.
These direct attacks on the Second
Amendment have been fully dissected
and rebutted (in this magazine and elsewhere) many times, on the basis of constitutionality as well as practical effect.
We wont reprise all of those arguments
here except to remind the readers of one of
the most obvious practical effects, which
is nevertheless one of the most important
that needs repeated restating: Our nawww.TheNewAmerican.com
tion is already planted thick

with laws (federal, state, and
Gun rights advocates who think they can
local) prohibiting violent
preserve the Second Amendment while
criminal activities and restricting firearms ownership
sacrificing other parts of the Constitution
and use. These laws like
are sadly mistaken; it must be defended
those being proposed by
President Obama infringe
in toto or it will be lost in toto.
on the self-defense rights of
the law-abiding, while doing
mother, WHICH IS AGAINST THE
little to impede criminals.
LAW.
Dr. Ignatius Piazza, founder and direc He transports these guns loaded,
tor of Front Sight Firearms Training InWHICH IS AGAINST THE LAW.
stitute in Pahrump, Nevada, is one of the
He brings guns onto school propmany observers who point out the obvious
erty, WHICH IS AGAINST THE
facts concerning Adam Lanza, the shooter
LAW.
in the tragic Sandy Hook incident, that the
He breaks into the school,
anti-gun militants prefer to ignore. HistoWHICH IS AGAINST THE LAW.
ry has proven time and time again that it is
He discharges the weapons withdangerous to believe laws to restrict lawin city limits, WHICH IS AGAINST
abiding citizens from having semi-autoTHE LAW.
matic weapons will reduce violent crime,
He murders 26 people WHICH
notes Dr. Piazza. Just the opposite occurs
IS AGAINST THE LAW.
when you disarm the law abiding. Sandy
He commits suicide, WHICH IS
Hook is another perfect example of the falAGAINST THE LAW.
lacy of gun control:
Another psych drug failure steals
guns, WHICH IS AGAINST THE
LAW.
Under the influence of the psych
drugs, he shoots and kills his own
Would another law including any of

those proposed by President Obama
have stopped Adam Lanza, or any of the
other mass-murdering shooters? Obviously not. Would the armed police in every
AP Images
Two wrongs dont make a right: After the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, many media and
politicians jumped onto the anti-gun bandwagon, though thorough studies by the National Academy
of Sciences and the Centers for Disease Control didnt find that any gun control laws thwarted crime.
11
guns
If adopted, this NRA proposal would

vastly expand the federal governments
involvement in both education and
law enforcement, in violation of the
Constitution, and make state and local
governments even more subservient to
Washington, D.C., politicians for funding.
school advocated by the NRA do the job?
Maybe. But at what cost, not only to taxpayers, but more importantly, to liberty?
Part of the answer to mass shootings, such
as Columbine and Sandy Hook, may be
armed police guards or allowing teachers
and other staff to carry concealed firearms,
as many people are advocating. But those
are matters that must be decided at the state
and local levels, not at the federal level.
Apparently, even many of the folks who
claim to oppose gun control are somewhat
fuzzy minded when it comes to understanding that every advance of our rapidly
expanding, freedom-stripping government
amounts to ever more dangerous people
control.
Perhaps the most obviously misguided response to the Sandy Hook shoot-
ing from the pro-gun side

came from the National
Rifle Association, which we
referred to earlier. At a December 21 press conference,
Wayne LaPierre, the NRAs
executive vice president and
primary public spokesman,
said:
I call on Congress today

to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in
every school and to do it now, to
make sure that blanket of safety is
in place when our children return to
school in January.
If adopted, this NRA proposal would

vastly expand the federal governments
involvement in both education and law
enforcement, in violation of the Constitution, and make state and local governments even more subservient to Washington, D.C., politicians for funding. Our
Constitution nowhere authorizes Congress
to appropriate funds for police or schools,
and for very good reason: Our Founding
Fathers recognized an expansion of federal powers to these areas could, and most
likely would, facilitate corruption and
tyranny. Moreover, they realized that no

central government could fashion a onesize-fits-all plan that would meet the needs
and desires of people in vastly different regions with very diverse backgrounds and
cultures. One of the many benefits of our
wonderful constitutional system is that it
establishes a structure of 50 state laboratories and thousands of county, city, and
town laboratories where various policies
can be tested and proved. If these laws
and policies arent to ones liking in a particular jurisdiction, one is free to move to
another. But once the central government
usurps the power over a matter and legislates for everyone, that freedom is lost.
In addition to proposing putting federally funded armed police officers in every
school, LaPierre also announced that the
NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop
a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school
that wants it. This new program, he said,
will be led by former Congressman Asa
Hutchinson, who was also head of the federal DEA and a former under secretary of
the Department of Homeland Security.
From armed security to building design
and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this
multi-faceted program will be developed
by the very best experts in their fields,
boasted LaPierre at the NRA news conference. Building design, access control, information technology it all sounds very
much like the NRA is advocating that our
schools adopt the federal TSAs surveillance state/police state paradigm that we
now experience at our airports.
At the same press conference, LaPierre
took aim at and blasted the federally imposed Gun-Free School Zones Act:
Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free
School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They
post signs advertising them.
And in so doing, they tell every
insane killer in America that schools
are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.
AP Images
Hoops to jump through: When a law-abiding person buys a gun from a gun store, he must pass
a background check. Criminals cant get guns this manner, but criminals do not lack for guns. As
with prohibition and drug laws, if someone wants an illegal product, someone else will supply it.
12
The politically correct (but fatally wrongheaded) gun-free school zones are an easy
and appropriate target. However, in the interest of full disclosure, LaPierre should
have reminded his listeners

that only a few years ago he
and the NRA were major
backers of the gun-free school
zones. Yes, its true, though it
will shock many Americans,
including many NRA members, to learn that LaPierre
testified in favor of the very
same gun-free school zones
he now decries. He actually
sided with President Clinton
and Attorney General Janet
Reno in this blatant attack on
the Second Amendment.
Here is what LaPierre said,
on behalf of the NRA,when
testifying on May 27, 1999,
before the Subcommittee on
Crime of the House Judiciary
Committee:
our nations refusal to create

an active national database
of the mentally ill?
Where in the Constitution did

LaPierre find the authority for
the federal government to create a national database of the
mentally ill? Nowhere, because there is no such authority, which means that creating
one would be an illegal and
flagrant usurpation of power.
In this proposal, the NRA is
strangely aligned with the
Obama administration, which
made a number of mental
health proposals a key feature
of its Now Is the Time plan of
action.
Unfortunately, a number of
other gun rights proponents
AP Images
and sheriff organizations opWe think its reasonable to
posed to President Obamas
support the federal Gun- Defense or attack? In trying save the Second Amendment, Wayne
gun control measures have
Free School Zones Act. LaPierre, the primary spokesman for the NRA, has promoted legislation
followed the NRA lead and
Whats unreasonable is let- that is as unconstitutional and short-sighted as the laws he is trying to
ting 6,000 students caught prevent. He has called for gun-free schools and federal police in schools. jumped on board the mental
health bandwagon, apparentwith illegal guns at school
go, prosecuting only 13 of them the
is that the national government in Wash- ly not realizing that it is every bit as much
past two years.
ington, D.C., has only those delegated about people control as are the proposand enumerated powers expressly given als aimed directly at gun ownership.
Peter R. Breggin, M.D., a distinguished
In addition, at the same time, the NRA to it by the states and the people.
also supported a vast expansion of the
That fundamental principle is most expert in psychiatry and psychopharmafederal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and particularly expressed in the 10th Amend- cology, warns that President Obamas proFirearms (ATF). At the time, The New ment of our Bill of Rights, which states: gram would vastly empower psychiatry
American pointed out (The NRAs Gun The powers not delegated to the United while gutting patient rights.
Dr. Breggin, the author of dozens of
Control Schizophrenia) that the NRAs States by the Constitution, nor prohibreasonable so-called solution to gun ited by it to the States, are reserved to the scientific articles and many professional
books, including Medication Madness:
violence in the schools was foolhardy States respectively, or to the people.
The NRA cannot defend the Second The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases
on the practical level, as well as a gross
violation of our Constitutions strict Amendment while trashing the 10th of Violence, Suicide and Crime, is adjunct
limitation on the powers of the national Amendment and the foundation on which professor in the Department of Counseling
all of the guarantees of our rights under the and Psychological Services at State Unigovernment.
versity of New York (SUNY) Oswego and
Now the NRA is at it again. This time Constitution are based.
has been in private counseling practice for
it is trying to undo the evils that it helped
more than four decades.
unleash with its support of the Gun-Free Mental Health Dictatorship
In a January 17, 2013 article for NatuSchool Zones Act by proposing still more LaPierre and the NRA even beat President
unconstitutional federal intervention in Obama to the punch in advocating the un- ralNews.com, Dr. Breggin warned:
state and local affairs. In this particular constitutional expansion of the federal
President Obama issued a set of 23
case, the NRA is proposing a vast expan- Psychiatric State. At his December 21,
executive orders Jan. 16, 2013 that
sion of federal TSA-style police-state oc- 2012 press conference, LaPierre said:
vastly empower psychiatry. This
cupation of every school, which means
great expansion of psychiatric auvirtually every neighborhood as well. The
The truth is, that our society is popthority and power will ensure that
NRA cannot credibly claim to be the deulated by an unknown number of
organized psychiatry and the mental
fender of the Second Amendment while it
genuine monsters.... A dozen more
health establishment will not resist
simultaneously is trashing the most fundakillers, a hundred more? How can we
other presidential executive orders
mental concept of our Constitution, which
possibly even guess how many, given
13
GUNS
Dangerous people? According to many pundits and politicians, the way to prevent gun crimes by
criminals is to enact laws that make it difficult and expensive for law-abiding people to buy, own,
and shoot guns the practical effect of almost every piece of gun control legislation written.
ership background checks, you are simply unrealistic, states Dr. Breggin. This
kind of power does nothing but make itself
grow at every possible opportunity.
Two additional Obama executive orders
Dr. Breggin, who is widely known as the
Conscience of Psychiatry, has testified move us yet closer to turning the healthbefore many governmental bodies and care system into a spy network, says
is credited with exposing and reforming Breggin. He and other medical experts
some of the most egregious psychiatric point out that Obama says, in Now Is the
Time, Doctors and other health care protreatments and abuses.
Professor Breggin notes that President viders also need to be able to ask about
Obamas Now Is the Time program will firearms in their patients homes and safe
broaden the categories of individuals who storage of those firearms. Obama also
can be investigated and whose privacy can said he will clarify that no federal law
be invaded. It orders, Direct the Attorney prevents health care providers from warnGeneral to review categories of individu- ing law enforcement authorities about
als prohibited from having a gun to make threats of violence.
These directives, says Breggin, undersure dangerous people are not slipping
mine whatever patient privacy protections
through the cracks.
If you think that this destruction of pri- remain under the federal HIPAA regulavacy within American healthcare will end tions. What the President now permits
with providing information for gun own- with his orders will soon be codified into
law, Breggin warns. Doctors and other health care
Never before in the fields of medicine
providers will be burdened
with spy duties, gathering
and law have there been so many events
information on gun posseswith so much concealed data and so little
sion and reporting anyone
suspected by them of being
focused expertise, Dr. Healy charges.
potentially violent.
Can prescription drugs cause you to kill
As reported by Rebecca
Terrell recently in The New
someone? Absolutely, he says.
A merican (Prescription
that greatly impair the free and effective practice of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and all of healthcare.
14
for Murder, March 18, 2013), Dr. Breggin and other psychiatric experts have
also been sounding the warning for many
years on the horrendous consequences of
the promiscuous prescription of psychiatric drugs to millions of Americans. Those
consequences include many thousands of
deaths due to suicide and homicide caused
by commonly prescribed antidepressants
and SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors), such as Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Luvox, and Paxil.
In his Health & Healing Newsletter for
February 2013, Julian Whitaker, M.D.
reported, Between 2004 and 2011, the
FDAs Adverse Events Reporting System
for drug side effects logged 12,755 reports
of psychiatric medications relating to violence. Among them were 359 homicides,
7,250 incidences of aggression, and 2,795
episodes of mania.
Dr. Whitaker notes further:
There were also 9,310 suicides. Actually, the damage is far greater. According to the FDA, fewer than 10
percent of adverse reactions are reported. To get a truer picture of the
horrors of these medications, multiply these numbers by 10!
He then lists 14 school shootings and 10
murders and murder-suicides that left a
total of 102 dead and 131 wounded, all
committed by individuals who have been
positively identified as having been taking or withdrawing from antidepressants
or other psychiatric drugs.
Dr. Whitaker also lists many additional
cases of suicide, murder, or mass murder in
which the perpetrators have been reported
in various media stories to have been under
the influence of psychiatric drugs, but in
which the records have been sealed allegedly to protect the privacy of the shooters, but more likely to protect the doctors
and the drug companies. If one is seeking
still additional cases to substantiate the
incredible pervasiveness of this enormous
medically induced epidemic, there are literally thousands of stories with links archived
at http://www.ssristories.com.
Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs
are medicines best kept secret, says Dr.
David Healy, a world-renowned psychiatrist who is a professor of psychiatry in
Wales and a former secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology.

Dr. Healy is a founder and chief executive
officer of Data Based Medicine Limited
and has written extensively on medical
issues, including his latest book, Pharmageddon. Never before in the fields of
medicine and law have there been so many
events with so much concealed data and so
little focused expertise, he charges. Can
prescription drugs cause you to kill someone?Absolutely, says Dr. Healy.
And yet, the Obama administration says
that we must give the psychiatric professionals who have unleashed the wave of
psych-drug-induced mass murder even
more money and power, as well as supervisory control over the mental health of
all Americans.
Research or Propaganda?
In addition, we must conduct more mental
health research. We must end the freeze
on gun violence research, the president
avers in Now Is the Time. The president laments that for years, the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) and other scientific agencies
have been barred by Congress from using
funds to advocate or promote gun control, and some members of Congress have
claimed this prohibition also bans the CDC
from conducting any research on the causes
of gun violence. However, research on gun
violence is not advocacy; it is critical public health research that gives all Americans
information they need.
Sounds reasonable, right? Not at all,
says Timothy Wheeler, M.D., founder and
director of California-based Doctors for
Responsible Gun Ownership. Memories
are short, wrote Dr. Wheeler in a January 16, 2013 article for National Review.
It was only 15 years ago that Congress
cut off federal funding for the Centers for
Disease Controls gun research. Why?
Dr. Wheeler explains:
Top CDC officials such as Patrick
OCarroll, M.D., had said things like
Were going to systematically build
a case that owning firearms causes
deaths. Were doing the most we can
do, given the political realities.
Nor was Congress pleased that
the CDC had funded in the spring
of 1995 a newsletter from the San
Francisco gun-control group the
Trauma Foundation. This newsletter

advised advocates to organize a
picket at gun manufacturing sites
and to work for campaign finance
reform to weaken the gun lobbys
clout. Theres no reason to believe
the CDC will not again use taxpayer
millions to pay for more anti-gunrights pamphleteering.
The anti-gun activists at the CDC and National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH)
have many militant allies at the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the
American Medical Association (AMA),
the American Academy of Pediatrics
(AAP), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), and various university medical
schools who have shown over and over
again that their research on gun violence
is indeed advocacy oriented and always
in the direction of more restricting, banning, licensing, and registering.
Leaders of gun rights organizations who
support more mental health programs
from Washington, D.C., may be in need
of mental counseling themselves. Perhaps
they are suffering from a self-destructive
impulse. After all, a sizable percentage of
the membership of most gun rights groups
would fall into categories that the federal
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

and other agencies have been demonizing
for years. Following the lead of radical
left-wing groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, the DHS and FBI have
been promiscuously affixing the rightwing extremist, anti-government, hate
group, and terrorist labels to millions
of law-abiding Americans. Military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, pro-life grandmothers, Christians
who voice opposition to homosexuality,
people who support states rights and oppose federal usurpations, opponents of the
United Nations, people who express concern over illegal immigration: All of these
and more have been repeatedly designated
by federal agencies as dangerous extremists. President Obama himself, during his
2008 campaign, infamously sneered at the
small-town and rural folk who cling to
guns or religion or antipathy toward people who arent like them or anti-immigrant
sentiment.
They are obviously in need of counseling by mental health professionals, right?
And in the meantime, until (if ever) they
are deemed no longer a danger to themselves or society, they must not be allowed
to own any firearms or to have any firearms
in their homes. Thats only sensible, right?
Laying it all out: The Obama administration wants psychiatrists and psychologists to report to
the government gun owners who may present a danger so that their guns can be confiscated.
Knowing this, patients will lie to their therapists and not get treated when volatile.
15
guns
Of course, thats the Obama/Pelosi/Feinstein/Schumer view reinforced every day
by Piers Morgan, Chris Matthews, Brian
Williams, and the rest of the media choir.
The federal mental health agenda
is one of the most dangerous attacks on
the Second Amendment we face today.
Tens of millions of Americans have been
prescribed psychotropic drugs by mental health professionals for everything
from ADHD to depression and insomnia. Under ObamaCare, might we see a
directive categorizing all these prescription drug users (or former users) as automatically presumed to be mentally or
emotionally unstable, and ordering all
healthcare providers to notify law enforcement authorities of these patients
who have a gun in the home? Will the
millions of military veterans who have
been forced to go through PTSD counseling and other psychological evaluations
find themselves subjected to scrutiny by
federal mental health bureaucrats who
will be empowered to comb through their
files and to decide whether they are fit
to keep and bear arms as a private citizen? It does not take much imagination
to envision a myriad of similarly realistic
scenarios that could be used by the Therapeutic State for piecemeal disarmament
of virtually the entire populace.
In fact it does not require any imagi-
nation at all. The recent case of Brandon

J. Raub, a Marine combat veteran who
served in Iraq and Afghanistan, provides
a reality-based look at the frightening direction Obamas mental health agenda
would take us. Raub was visited at his
home in North Chesterfied, Virginia, last
August 16 by agents of the FBI and Secret
Service. The reason for their visit? Some
unnamed person or persons had reported
that Raub had posted threatening posts
on the Internet on his Facebook account.
Raub was taken by the FBI, Secret Service, and local police under an emergency
custody order to John Randolph Medical
Center in Hopewell, Virginia. From there
he was transferred to a veterans hospital
and held under involuntary commitment.
A medical assessment described him as
paranoid and delusional.
He was incarcerated for a week, and
might be imprisoned still if not for the intervention of attorneys for the Rutherford
Institute. What was his crime, or what
grave danger did he pose to society? He
allegedly posted statements challenging
the official version of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, condemning the move toward a
one-world banking system, and opposing
the growing imposition of police state/surveillance state measures. The Rutherford
lawyers won a release on August 23 from
Circuit Judge W. Allan Sharrett, who dis-
His goal: President Obama derided those who cling to guns or religion, and his administration has
been doing everything in its power to marginalize gun owners and believers in Christ. So while he
says he wants common-sense gun laws, his track record says he wants guns outlawed.
16
missed an earlier involuntary commitment

petition as invalid. The petition is so devoid of any factual allegations that it could
not be reasonably expected to give rise to a
case or controversy, Judge Sharrett stated
in his release order.
John Whitehead, president of Rutherford
Institute, issued a sharp condemnation of
the government action, noting that Brandon Raub is no different from the majority of Americans who use their private
Facebook pages to post a variety of content, ranging from song lyrics and political
hyperbole to trash talking their neighbors,
friends and government leaders.
For government officials to not only
arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing
more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to
undergo psychological evaluations and
detain him against his will goes against
every constitutional principle this country
was founded upon, Whitehead said. This
should be a wake-up call to Americans that
the police state is here.
Unfortunately, many other veterans are
facing the same fate as Brandon Raub. In
a February 26 online article for The New
American, Joe Wolverton reported:
Veterans around the country are receiving letters from the federal government informing them that because
of alleged physical or mental disability their financial decisions will be
made by a government-appointed
fiduciary and they will be forbidden from purchasing, possessing,
receiving or transporting a firearm or
ammunition.
The Veterans Administration, notes
Wolverton, is citing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and warning veterans labeled as incompetent that
they will be fined and/or imprisoned if
they are found in possession of a gun or
ammunition.
People who have allowed themselves
to be stampeded into supporting safe
schools and mental health programs
that build the federal Surveillance State/
Therapeutic State/ Police State could soon
find that they have boxed themselves into
a regime that strips them of all of their
rights including the right to keep and
bear arms. n
economy
Soaking the Rich

Hurts Rich and Poor Alike
Time and again, when taxes have been raised on the rich, the poor suffered the greatest
detriment. And when taxes were lowered, the poor saw most of the benefit.
by Bob Adelmann
n a book, Benjamin Anderson tells the story of how a wealthy

entrepreneur reacted to the imposition of much higher income-tax rates in 1935 at the bottom of the Great Depression. Andersons Economics and the Public Welfare, a highly regarded study of the Great Depression, was based on his personal
experience as an economist for the Chase Manhattan Bank
and the editor of the Chase Economic Bulletin. Anderson
recounts the case of one rich man who,
What good, indeed? Right at the very bottom of the worst

depression the country had experienced since its founding was
an entrepreneur with capital and a willingness to risk it in an
attempt to gain profits in ventures which, had they proven successful, would have hired the very people most dreadfully impacted by that depression. Instead, he withdrew from the markets altogether, and retired.
Anderson then made a most pertinent observation: One

may well raise the question as to just what good it did to
the people of the United States to put this typical man in
this position.
Library of Congress
at the age of 25, had inherited an estate of about $12 million some thirty years before these 1935 taxes came.
He had nursed his $12 million into an estate of about $30
million during those thirty years.
He had done it by a kind of activity particularly helpful
and useful to the country....
He had taken many risks, knowing that many of them
would turn out badly, but counting on a few of them to
turn out well enough so that the profits on the successful
ones would offset the much more numerous losses on the
unsuccessful ones....
In the individual a vigorous man fifty-five years old,
the effects of the new taxes were paralyzing. More than
three-fourths of any profits which he might have [made]
from a new venture would be taken away from him by
income taxes. Any losses which he might incur would
be his own.
But further, if he should die, his estate would have to
pay the federal government and to the state of New York
$19,602,500, or 65.342 percent of the estate. How
could an estate pay this tax if it were spread out in new
ventures, in assets for which no ready market existed, in
assets which could not be liquidated without great loss?
It was a painful thing to watch him turn his energies
from creative production to consultation with tax lawyers
as to how he could save as much as possible for his heirs.
It was a painful thing to watch a vigorous man of fifty-five
turning from creative activities to preparation for death....
He withdrew as far as possible from illiquid investments,
and turned to investments of a high degree of liquidity.
Cataloging doom: Benjamin Anderson, an intimate observer of the Great

Depression, watched as government taxes caused the rich to find safe
shelters for their money, rather than invest in new businesses.
17
economy
is first paid out to employees,
suppliers and contractors.
The lesson is simple: Reducing taxes on
Only some time later, if the
business is profitable, does
the wealthy results not only in the wealthy
money return to the business
paying more in income taxes, rather than
owners but in the absence
of a profit motive this acless, but those less well-off paying less.
tivity does not occur. (Emphasis added.)
George Reisman, in his Capitalism:
By refraining from taking such risks
he didnt diminish his lifestyle by any A Treatise on Economics, explained the
measurable amount. He continued to failure of such redistributionist attempts
enjoy a prosperous living, moving to to spread the wealth from the wealthy to
his country estate to live out the remain- others: Without capitalism there wouldnt
der of his life. There was little trickle- be any wealth to distribute:
down effect from his living well to be
enjoyed by those serving his needs. CerThe workers of the early nineteenth
century did not lack automobiles and
tainly nothing to compare to the possible
television sets because the capitalists
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of jobs his
successful ventures might have created
were keeping the whole supply to
had he been allowed to make money by
themselves. There simply were no auinvesting his money. The potential for
tomobiles or televisions for anyone.
significant improvement in the lives of
those he might have hired was simply President Warren Harding knew that the
eliminated altogether.
restoration of an economy wracked by
Such are the perverse consequences depression would be dependent precisely
of enforcing a philosophy of punishing on those risk takers who, if they were alwealth creators by redistributing their lowed to, would be the engines driving the
wealth to others in the name of fairness recovery from it.
The Depression of 1920-21 was the
and equity and egalitarianism.
Economist Thomas Sowell spelled out sharpest economic contraction in the prethe benefits of allowing wealth creators vious 140 years, with industrial production
to take their risks, which are significant: dropping by one-third and unemployment
Money invested in new business ventures doubling from January 1920 to July 1921.
Automobile production fell an astonishing
60 percent while wholesale prices cratered
Unwise counsel: Herbert Hoover, as
by nearly 40 percent.
President Warren Hardings commerce
Harding took the advice of his treasury
secretary, gathered this group, who forwarded
secretary, Andrew Mellon, who concluded
governmental remedies to end the 1921
that higher tax rates would drive capital
depression. Happily, Harding ignored most of
them and let the depression run its course.
underground or into tax-free securities
18
whereas lower taxes would draw capital

into the marketplace where it could put
people back to work. Harding cut taxes ferociously, bringing the top rate down from
73 percent in 1921 to 25 percent in 1925.
He cut government spending equally aggressively, from $18.5 billion in 1919 to
$6.4 billion in 1920 and then further to
$3.3 billion in 1922.
The economy leapt upward, and by
1923, it had returned to full employment,
scarcely two years after the depression
began. As Sowell explained in his short
essay Trickle Down Theory and Tax
Cuts for the Rich,
In 1921, when the tax rate on people
making over $100,000 a year was 73
percent, the federal government collected a little over $700 million in income taxes, of which 30 percent was
paid by those making over $100,000.
By 1929 the federal government collected more than a billion
dollars in income taxes, of which
65 percent was collected from those
making over $100,000.
Even more remarkable was the fact that
as tax rates fell, both the amount and the
proportion of taxes paid by those whose net
income was no higher than $25,000 went
down between 1921 and 1929, while both
the amount and the proportion of taxes paid
by those whose net incomes were between
$50,000 and $100,000 went up and
the amount and proportion of taxes paid
by those whose net incomes were over
$100,000 went up even more sharply.
The lesson is simple: Reducing taxes on
the wealthy results not only in the wealthy
tax rate was [raised to] 63 percent. Given

this extraordinary single-year rate hike,
it is no wonder that 1933 was the single
worst year in U.S. economic history.
It took years for the economy to recover, a history that is beyond the scope of
this article to explore. But when John F.
Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he
was still faced with an underperforming
economy. In one of his most memorable
speeches, Kennedy addressed the Economic Club of New York on December
14, 1962, noting the economys continuing failure to perform at its maximum:
AP Images
Big dam spender: Largely regarded as a supporter of laissez-faire capitalism, in reality President
Herbert Hoover was an interventionist of the first order, urging public works programs to
stimulate the economy, including the one for which he is best known: the Hoover Dam.
paying more in income taxes, rather than

less, but those less well-off paying less.
In bringing the legacy of Silent Cal
President Calvin Coolidge to light
from obscurity, author Amity Shlaes wrote
in The American that Coolidge continued
the legacy of frugality begun by Harding
after he died in the summer of 1923:
Under Coolidge the federal debt fell.
Under Coolidge the top income tax
rate came down by half, to 25 percent. Under Coolidge the federal
budget was always in surplus. Under
Coolidge unemployment was 5 percent or even 3 percent....
Under Coolidge Americans wired
their homes for electricity and bought
their first cars or household appliances on credit. Under Coolidge the
economy grew strongly, even as the
federal government shrank.
Can you say Roaring Twenties? As
Coolidge himself said,
The wise and correct course to follow
in taxation and all other economic
legislation is not to destroy those who
have already secured success but to
create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be
successful.
To prove the point, economist Veronique

de Rugy wrote,
The rising tide of strong economic
growth lifted all boats. At the top
end, total income grew as a result of
many more people becoming prosperous, rather than a fixed number
of high earners getting greatly richer. For example, between 1922 and
1928, the average income reported
on tax returns of those earning more
than $100,000 increased 15 percent,
but the number of taxpayers in that
group almost quadrupled. During
the same period, the number of taxpayers earning between $10,000 and
$100,000 increased 84 percent, while
the number reporting income of less
than $10,000 fell. [Emphases added.]
Unfortunately those lessons in fiscal sanity were lost when the Great Depression
began in 1929. The top income-tax rate in
1932 began at Coolidges 25 percent but
President Herbert Hoover, dismayed by
the enormous drop in revenues and the
resulting federal deficit, raised the top tax
rates to an astounding 63 percent, dropping the country into the worst depression
in its history. As Robert Murphy noted:
The next year, because of Hoovers desire
to close the budget hole, the top income
In the last two years we have made

significant strides. Our gross national product has risen eleven percent,
while inflation has been arrested.
Employment has been increased by
one-point-three million jobs. Profits,
personal income, living standards
all are setting new records. Most of
the economic indicators for this quarter are up and the prospects are for
further expansion in the next quarter.
But we must look beyond the next
quarter, or the last quarter, or even the
last two years. For we can and must
do better, much better than weve
been doing for the last five-and-ahalf years.
Utilization of existing plant and
equipment could be much higher
and, if it were, investment would rise.
We need not accept an unemployment rate of five percent or more,
such as we have had for 60 out of
the last 61 months. There is no need
for us to be satisfied with a rate of
growth that keeps good men out of
work and good capacity out of use.
What Kennedy then proposed echoed from
the years of the Harding and Coolidge administrations. He proposed cutting taxes
on the wealthy in order to stimulate the
economy and put people back to work:
This nations economy can and must
do even better than it has done in the
last five years. Our choice, therefore,
boils down to one of: doing nothing, and thereby risking a widening
gap between our actual and potential growth in output, profits, and
employment or taking action, at
19
the federal level, to raise our entire

economy to a new and higher level
of business activity....
The final and best means of
strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the
burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are
imposed by our present tax system
and this administration pledged itself
last summer to an across-the-board,
top-to-bottom cut in personal and
corporate income taxes to be enacted
and become effective in 1963....
For all these reasons, next years tax
bill should reduce personal as well as
corporate income taxes: for those in
the lower brackets, who are certain to
spend their additional take-home pay,
and for those in the middle and upper
brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts
and enabled to invest more capital.
And then Kennedy reiterated the lessons
learned from Harding and Coolidge:
In short, it is a paradoxical truth that
tax rates are too high today and tax
revenues are too low and the soundest
way to raise the revenues in the long
run is to cut the rates now....
And the reason is that only full
employment can balance the budget,
and tax reduction can pave the way to
that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget
deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which
can bring a budget surplus.
With the passage of Kennedys tax-cuts
bill in the summer of 1963, the economy
was allowed to breathe again without the
punishment of high tax rates and began to
flourish. By reducing the top bracket from
91 percent to 70 percent, tax revenues
climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153
billion in 1968. And the rising tide lifted
all boats as well. Taxes paid by those making more than $50,000 a year rose by 57
percent from 1963 to 1966, while those in
the lowest tax bracket saw their rate drop
to 14 percent, leaving them also better off
than before.
President Reagan was faced with a similar situation when he won the presidency
20
AP Images
economy
Correcting distortions: This bank run on the Bank of the United States has been blamed for the
start of the Great Depression, though other bank runs happened in the 1930s. In reality, the run
was simply part of the cleansing process necessary to remove overleveraged banks from the
system. No such cleansing is allowed today.
in 1980. Faced with economic malaise

a phrase that Reagan used in his campaign against then-president Jimmy Carter
Reagan moved the top tax bracket from
70 percent down to 28 percent, with similar
results. The economy began to revive and,
along with it, tax revenues to the government. In 1983, federal income taxes were
$326 billion, and they steadily increased
each year so that by 1989 they totaled $549
billion, an increase of 68 percent.
And the wealthy? Because of the significant reduction in the marginal tax rates, the
wealth-generators began to do what they do
best: They began to invest in the economy
once again, with predictable results. In
1981, the top one percent paid 17.6 percent
of all personal income taxes, but by 1988,
their share had jumped to 27.5 percent.
And those in the bottom half? Their share
of income taxes dropped from 7.5 percent
in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.
Two highly regarded economists, William Niskanen and Stephen Moore, measured the Reagan economy by comparing
its performance to the Ford-Carter years
(1974-1981) and to the Bush-Clinton
years (1989-1995) and came up with the
same conclusion.
On eight of 10 key economic indicators, The American economy performed
better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and post-Reagan years. Real
(after-tax) economic growth was higher,
family incomes were higher, and unemployment fell faster.

During his second term, President
Clinton signed into law a tax cut bill that
slashed the capital gains tax rate by a huge
28 percent with results that were predictable: In 1995, just over $8 billion in venture capital was invested in the economy
but by 1998, the first full year of the lower
capital gains tax rate, venture capitalists
invested $28 billion, more than three times
the rate just three years earlier. And in
1999, new capital invested in the economy
doubled again. And, also predictably, total
federal revenue rose each year after the
1998 tax cuts were passed.
The so-called Bush tax cuts of 2001 and
2003 had the same effect. The economy
grew for 52 consecutive months resulting
in increases in federal tax revenue of $780
billion, the largest four-year increase in
American history. Also predictably, taxpayers in the highest brackets wound up
paying more in taxes rather than less,
which the New York Times called a surprise windfall. The Wall Street Journal
noted that because of the cuts, President
Bush will leave to his successor an economy 19% larger than the one he inherited
from President Clinton.
The economic laws involved are immutable. They are also international. In
a remarkable working paper published
by the rarely free-market-friendly InterTHE NEW AMERICAN April 1, 2013
An increasing number of American states

are pushing down income-tax rates in efforts to grow their states economies, taking
lessons from history (Harding, Coolidge,
Kennedy, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, et al.)
and applying them locally. In the preface
to the fifth edition of Rich States, Poor
States published by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Mary
Fallin, the governor of Oklahoma, wrote:
seen a net increase of almost 30,000

jobs in the last 12 months, and our
job growth rate ranks in the top ten
among all states. Our unemployment
rate continues to be one of the lowest
in the country at 6.1 percent. And in
2011, Oklahoma ranked first in the
nation for the growth of manufacturing jobs, which grew five times faster
than the national average....
Our state is moving forward with
a bold tax reform plan that will represent the most significant tax cut in
state history and chart a course towards the gradual elimination of the
state income tax. It will give Oklahoma one of the lowest overall tax
burdens in the entire country, making us a more competitive state for
those looking to move jobs here. This
is the conservative centerpiece of our
pro-jobs agenda that will let working families keep more of their hardearned money and provide a higher
quality of life for all Oklahomans.
[Emphasis added.]
While many other states were raising

taxes in order to close their budget
gaps and driving out jobs in the
process we cut our income tax. We
provided relief to working families
and spurred economic growth in the
private sector. As a result, we have
After reviewing the economic performance of all 50 states, authors Arthur

Laffer (developer of the Laffer Curve),
Stephen Moore (economist with the Wall
Street Journal), and Jonathan Williams
(director of ALEC) concluded that the
results speak for themselves. The no per-
national Monetary Fund (IMF), the question was asked: Can tax rate cuts increase
revenues? The authors studied the impact
on the Russian economy in 2005 when the
government introduced a flat income-tax
rate of 13 percent, replacing a tiered-rate
structure that rose as high as 30 percent.
The authors were astonished to find:
Personal income tax revenues have
increased significantly: 46 percent
during the next year. Even more
interesting [personal income tax]
revenues continued to increase
during the next year.
AP Images
No wonder she is smiling: Gov. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.) is pushing Oklahoma to eliminate the state
income tax altogether, which, she said, would give Oklahoma one of the lowest overall tax burdens
in the entire country, making us a more competitive state for those looking to move jobs here.
sonal income tax [PIT] states outperform

their high tax counterparts across the board
in gross state product growth, population
growth, job growth, and, perhaps shockingly, even tax receipt growth.
They added:
When it comes to growing gross state
product (GSP), the no PIT states
have, on average, outperformed those
states with the highest rates by 39.2
percent over the past decade. They
have also outperformed the U.S. average by 25.6 percent.
Additionally, not even one state in
the high tax rate group performed as
well as the average no PIT state.
The profound unfairness of raising taxes
on the rich has little to do with how the
rich will live. They will live well, regardless, through careful tax planning or simply living off interest on money that could
otherwise be invested in the economy.
No, the real impact is on the hundreds,
thousands, perhaps even millions of workers who will not have a chance to contribute to their own welfare, and societys, in
jobs that dont exist and opportunities that
wont arise. It even impacts taxpayers who
do have jobs, for they will have to bear
the burden of government without the help
of that additional capital generating additional revenues in the process of adding to
the general welfare.
Additionally, to the extent that the
wealthy park their idle funds in tax-exempt securities rather than in a lively and
growing economy, to that extent local and
state governments seeking to borrow by
offering tax-exempt securities will find
that interest rates will be higher due to the
increased demand, impacting negatively
the taxpayers once again.
Like coal in a locomotives boiler, if that
coal is withheld, the steam needed to drive
the engine is reduced, slowing down the
entire economic train. Put another way, in a
capitalist society, if capital is restricted and
limited and punished, the economy stalls.
On the other hand, in an enlightened
world that operates in accordance with
predictable economic principles, there
will be not only full employment but an
higher standard of living for everyone,
even (perhaps even especially) those on
the lower rungs of the economic ladder. n
21
AP Images
taxes
Tax Credit
or Income Transfer?
It is a good thing when taxes are reduced. But when refundable tax credits provide
taxpayers with more money than they paid in, thats a subsidy, not a tax cut.
by Laurence M. Vance
ax season will soon be over. Although this doesnt mean that paying taxes is over for the year, it does
mean that we will no longer see the glut of
roadside signs advertising tax preparation
services that claim they can get you a tax
credit of up to $4,169 per child.
Now, in principle, tax credits, like tax
exclusions, tax exemptions, tax deductions, tax shelters, tax incentives, and tax
loopholes, are a good thing because they
allow people to keep more of their money
in their pockets and out of the hands of the
government.
After both tax rates and tax brackets increased during the Bush Sr. and Clinton
years, the so-called Bush tax cuts the
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA) and the
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA) fixed the
tax brackets at 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, and 35

percent, increased to $1,000 the child tax
credit, set the long-term capital gains and
qualified dividend tax rates at 15 percent,
increased the section 179 expense deduction for small businesses to up to $250,000,
and gradually reduced the estate tax.
The tax code was most recently changed
by the American Tax Relief Act of 2012,
(ATRA) passed by the lame-duck Congress to keep from going over the fiscal
cliff. The Bush-era tax cuts were made
permanent, but only for those making
under $400,000 a year ($450,000 for married couples); the estate tax increased to a
maximum rate of 40 percent with a $5.25
million exemption; the top marginal tax
rate was increased to 39.6 percent; and
some tax credits were extended.
A tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the amount of income tax owed.
Current tax credits include the credit for
child and dependent care expenses, edu-
cation credits, the foreign tax credit, the

retirement savings contributions credit,
the child tax credit, the adoption credit,
the plug-in electric vehicle credit, and
residential energy credits. Tax credits may
reduce the tax owed to zero, but if there is
no taxable income to begin with, then no
credit can be taken.
Unless the tax credit is refundable.
Refundable Tax Credits

When Americans think of government
welfare programs, they generally think
of things like Temporary Assistance to
Needy Families (TANF), which replaced
Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC); Head Start; Medicaid; or food
stamps, now known as the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Other welfare programs that might be
mentioned include the National School
Lunch Program (NSLP); Women, Infants,
and Children (WIC); energy assistance;
23
ried filing jointly) on homes sistance credit covered 65 percent of health

whose purchase price did not insurance premiums for workers who were
It would be rare indeed that anyone would
exceed $800,000, as long as involuntarily terminated between Septemthe taxpayers modified ad- ber 1, 2008, and May 31, 2010. It was
consider a tax credit to be welfare. But
justed gross income was not phased out once the taxpayers modified
unfortunately, thats just what refundable
over $125,000 ($225,000 for adjusted gross income exceeded $125,000
($250,000 for married filing jointly).
married filing jointly).
tax credits are all of them.
For tax years 2007 through 2012, there
For tax year 2008, an economic stimulus payment (de- was a prior-year alternative minimum tax
housing assistance; the State Childrens fined by law to be a refundable tax credit) (AMT) credit that allowed taxpayers to
Health Insurance Program (SCHIP); and of $300 ($600 for married filing jointly) claim a credit for a portion of AMT liabiliwas available to filers with at least $3,000 ties in a prior year resulting from certain
Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
But it would be rare indeed that anyone in positive income-tax liability. Each qual- income that would not have been subject
would consider a tax credit to be welfare. ifying child under 17 increased the pay- to the regular income tax. The credit is still
But unfortunately, thats just what refund- ments by $300. The credit began to phase in existence, but is no longer refundable.
out once the taxpayers adjusted gross
Beginning in tax year 2002, but due
able tax credits are all of them.
A refundable tax credit is treated as a income went over $75,000 ($150,000 for to expire in tax year 2013, is a refundable health coverage tax credit that covers
payment from the taxpayer, such as federal married filing jointly).
For tax years 2009 through 2010, there 72.5 percent of health insurance costs for
income tax withheld or quarterly estimated
taxes paid. Current refundable tax credits was the Making Work Pay credit, a pro- households eligible for trade adjustment
for individuals include the additional child vision of the American Recovery and assistance or that have pension plans that
credit, the earned income credit, the health Reinvestment Act of 2009. It equaled the have been taken over by the Pension Bencoverage credit, and the American oppor- lesser of 6.2 percent of an individuals efit Guaranty corporation.
For tax years 1997 through 2009, the
tunity credit. If the tax credit payment earned income or $400 ($800 for married
is more than the tax owed, the taxpayer filing jointly). Thus, any taxpayer whose adoption credit was nonrefundable, as it
receives a net payment from the govern- earned income was $6,451 or more was is now. But for years 2010 and 2011, the
ment a refund of money he never paid eligible for the maximum amount of the credit of up to $13,360 was fully refundin. Refundable tax credits are the ultimate credit. The credit began to phase out once able for modified adjusted gross incomes
form of welfare because they are payments the taxpayers modified adjusted gross in- up to $185,210 and partially refundable
made in cash instead of payments made to come reached $95,000 ($190,000 for mar- as that number increased up to $225,210.
Taxpayers adopting a special needs child
third parties, as in Medicaid, or an amount ried filing jointly).
The COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus could qualify for the full amount of the
deposited on an Electronic Benefit Card
(EBC), as in the food-stamp program. Budget Reconciliation Act) premium as- credit even if they paid few or no adopAnd no amount received as a tax refund
is counted as income when determining
eligibility for federally funded welfare
programs such as TANF, SSI, or SNAP.
There are two types of refundable tax
credits: earnings-based and expenditurebased. Earnings-based credits are based
on earning money from work, as opposed
to earning money from investments. Expenditure-based credits are based on the
purchase of a particular good or service,
like paying college tuition.
The number and costs of refundable tax
credits have both grown and varied since
the first one appeared on Americans 1040
tax forms for tax year 1975. According
to the Congressional Budget Office, the
number of credits peaked at 11 in 2010,
with the cost to the taxpayers of these
credits reaching a high of $238 billion in
2008.
For tax years 2008 through 2010, there
was a refundable first-time homebuyer Little bundle of... cash: A nonrefundable tax credit of up to $12,650 is available for taxpayers
credit of up to $4,000 ($8,000 for mar- who adopted a child in 2012. For years 2010 and 2011, the credit was refundable.
24
AP Images
taxes
over 27 million eligible

tion-related expenses, and
individuals and families
the credit could even be
received nearly $62 bilclaimed for an adoption
lion in EITC. And acthat was never finalized.
cording to the CongresThanks to ObamaCare,
sional Budget Office, that
coming in 2014 will be
number is expected to rise
a premium assistance
to $68 billion for 2013,
credit that will subsidize
with $60 billion of that
the purchase of health inamount being payments
surance for some people
that exceed tax liabilities.
through the newly estabMany states and some citlished insurance exchangies and counties also offer
es. The credit will cover
their residents an earned
the difference between
income credit.
the reference premium
The EIC program has
for a locality and the
always received wide bihouseholds contribution.
partisan support in ConTaxpayers with modified
gress. Like many federal
adjusted gross incomes of
programs that eventually
between 100 and 400 pergrew exponentially becent of the federal poverty
yond what they were ever
guideline may be eligible
intended, the EIC had
for the credit.
modest beginnings. A
The American opportuseemingly innocent provinity credit is 100 percent
sion of the Tax Reduction
of the first $2,000 plus 25
Act of 1975 was a refundpercent of the next $2,000
able tax credit for lowin qualified tuition and
income taxpayers with
related educational exchildren that provided
penses the taxpayer pays
them with up to $400. The
for each eligible student. It gives whether you pay taxes or not: The Earned Income Credit has always
credit was soon extended
No credit can be claimed received wide bipartisan support in Congress. The amount of the credit has
for 1976, 1977, and 1978.
if the taxpayers modified increased every year irrespective of which party was in power.
By 1978, the maximum a
adjusted gross income
reaches $90,000 ($180,000 for married the refundable portion termed the addi- family could receive went up 25 percent
filing jointly). Forty percent of the Ameri- tional child tax credit. It is available to tax- to $500, with a partial credit given on incan opportunity credit is refundable. That payers with a qualifying child who receive comes between $5,000 and $10,000. Bemeans that an amount up to $1,000 per less than the full amount of the $1,000 per ginning in 1979, the EIC was made a perstudent can be refunded over and above child tax credit because their tax owed is manent fixture on IRS tax forms. Workers
less than the allowable child tax credit. could also begin to elect to receive a partial
what the taxpayer paid in.
The child tax credit was introduced as In that case the amount of the additional credit in advance as a payment from their
part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. child tax credit is the smaller of the re- employers along with their regular pay
Originally worth up to $400 for tax year maining child tax credit and 15 percent of and claim the rest of the credit when filing
1998, it is now worth up to $1,000 for the taxpayers taxable earned income. The their tax return. The participation rate for
each child under age 17 that is claimed as income phase-out amount begins, as with this provision was never very high, and it
a dependent. Tax law changes in 2001 in- the child tax credit, when adjusted gross was rescinded in the Education Jobs and
cluded two major changes to the child tax income exceeds $75,000 ($110,000 for Medicaid Assistance Act of 2010.
By 1990, the maximum EIC was up to
credit. First, the amount of the credit was married filing jointly).
$953, with a partial benefit available for
scheduled to double, in stages, from the
incomes up to $20,264. In 1990, the sys$500 per child that the credit was in tax The Earned Income Credit
years 1999 and 2000 to $1,000 per child The crown jewel of refundable tax credits tem was greatly expanded for the next three
by tax year 2010. (This was modified in is the earned income tax credit (EITC) or years. Not only did benefits go up, more
2003 by the JGTRRA when Congress ac- earned income credit (EIC). With a maxi- dollars were awarded if the taxpayer had
celerated the timing of the child tax credit mum benefit for 2012 of $5,891, the EIC two or more children instead of one. Also
benefit increase, raising it to $1,000 per is not just welfare for the masses; it is a new was an additional credit of up to $357 if
child in tax year 2003.) And second, the huge wealth redistribution scheme. Ac- a child was less than one year old. By 1993,
credit was made partially refundable, with cording to the IRS, Nationwide last year, the maximum credit was up to $1,511.
25
taxes
AP Images
Family trifecta: Families with three or more children can get a refundable Earned Income Credit of up to $5,891 even if they pay no federal
income tax. In reality, most people dont receive the maximum amount. According to the IRS, the average credit last year was $2,200.
For tax year 2012, those who qualify for

the EIC can receive a credit from:
$2 to $475 with no qualifying children
$9 to $3,169 with one qualifying child
$10 to $5,236 with two qualifying children
$11 to $5,891 with three or more qualifying children
Now we can see the reason for the
roadside signs offering a tax credit of up
to $4,169 per child: a $1,000 additional
child tax credit and a $3,169 earned income tax credit. In reality, most people
dont receive the maximum amount. According to the IRS, the average credit last
year was $2,200.
To be eligible for the EIC, ones income
must be below certain limits. For tax year
2012, both earned income and adjusted
gross income must each be less than:
$13,980 ($19,190 married filing jointly) with no qualifying children
$36,920 ($42,130 married filing jointly) with one qualifying child
$41,952 ($47,162 married filing jointly) with two qualifying children
$45,060 ($50,270 married filing jointly) with three
If the tax credit payment is more than
or more qualifying children
Those with no qualifying
the tax owed, the taxpayer receives a net
children must also be at least
payment from the government a refund
age 25 but under age 65.
The EIC program is alof money he never paid in.
ways said to encourage work
Although the EIC was introduced under
President Ford, and steadily increased
under Presidents Carter, Reagan, and
Bush, it skyrocketed under President Clinton even though he had a Republican
majority in Congress for the last six years
of his presidency. The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1993 increased the maximum
EIC payment in 1994 by more than $1,000
to a whopping $2,528. Also new in 1994
was an EIC payment for a single person
with no dependents.
But not only did the EIC go up every
year that the Republicans controlled the
Congress under Clinton, it likewise increased when the Republicans had an absolute majority in Congress and the White
House for more than four years under
George W. Bush. Beginning in 2009,
EIC payments were increased for taxpayers with three or more children. That increase has been extended to 2013, when
the maximum benefit is scheduled to rise
to $6,044, with a partial benefit available
for taxpayers with incomes up to $46,227
($51,567 for married filing jointly).
26
and discourage welfare. Ronald Reagan

once heralded it as the best anti-poverty,
the best pro-family, the best job creation
measure to come out of Congress. According to the IRS:
EITC, the Earned Income Tax Credit,
sometimes called EIC, is a tax credit
to help you keep more of what you
earned. It is a refundable federal income tax credit for low to moderate
income working individuals and families. Congress originally approved
the tax credit legislation in 1975 in
part to offset the burden of social security taxes and to provide an incentive to work. When EITC exceeds the
amount of taxes owed, it results in a
tax refund to those who claim and
qualify for the credit.
According to a report on the EIC by the
General Accounting Office (now called
the Government Accountability Office) for
the Senate Finance and House Ways and
Means committees, Congress enacted the
EIC: (1) to assist low-income wage earners who were adversely affected by rising
prices; (2) to offset the effects of social
security taxes paid by these workers; and
(3) to encourage these workers, who might
otherwise receive welfare benefits, to seek
employment.
But how can a program that is itself welTHE NEW AMERICAN April 1, 2013
A Masquerade
Refundable tax credits can amount to a
significant part of a familys income. Consider a typical American family with two
children. For tax year 2012, they can make
up to $27,104 and not only owe nothing
in taxes, but get a $4,220 earned income
credit plus a $1,000 per child additional
tax credit refunded to them. This effectively gives them an artificial income of
$33,324. This is better than a real income
increase of that amount because the familys income is still $27,104 when qualifying for public assistance and when figuring the taxable wages for Social Security
and Medicare. To get a maximum earned
income credit of $5,236 for having two
children, a couple can still make $22,299,
thus giving them an artificial income of
$29,535 with the addition of two $1,000
per child refundable tax credits.
According to the latest data from the
IRS, in tax year 2010, the top one percent
of taxpayers (in terms of adjusted gross
income) paid 37.38 percent of all federal income taxes. The top five percent of
taxpayers paid 59.07 percent. The top 10
percent of taxpayers paid 70.62 percent.
The top 25 percent of taxpayers paid 87.11
percent of the taxes, and the top 50 percent paid a whopping 97.64 percent. But
not only do half of Americans pay little or
no federal income tax, most of them receive payments from the government via
refundable tax credits.
Refundable tax credits were created
to meet social policy goals. The government using the tax system to achieve
these goals is no different than the government using spending programs. It is
only a difference in administration. But
aside from the fact that it is neither conwww.TheNewAmerican.com
$7000
Earned Income Credit (EIC)
$6000
$5000
Maximum Benefit
fare be said to discourage welfare? How

can the EIC be called a tax refund when it
is other peoples money that is refunded?
Why do low to moderate income working individuals and families need a tax
credit, when they generally pay no federal
income taxes in the first place? If Social
Security taxes are a burden, then why
not reduce the Social Security tax rate as
was done in 2010 and 2011? And since
when is it the job of government to provide incentives, assist low-income wage
earners, monitor prices, or encourage anyone to do anything?
$4000
Axis Title
$3000
$2000
$1000
$0
1975
1978
1981
1984
1987
1990
1993
Tax Year
1996
1999
2002
2005
2008
2011
AP Images
Child-rich cheats: A majority of the recipients of the Earned Income Credit use the services of
professional tax preparers. Even so, it is the tax credit most prone to fraud.
stitutional nor the proper role of government to set social policy goals in the first
place, since refundable tax credits paid
to non-taxpayers are funded by taxes collected from taxpayers, they are nothing
but income transfer programs and wealth
redistribution schemes.
Short of Congress lowering the tax
rates, eliminating the progressivity of the
tax code, or abolishing the income tax

altogether, Americans need all the tax
credits, tax exclusions, tax exemptions,
tax deductions, tax shelters, tax incentives, and tax loopholes that they can get.
But all refundable tax credits should be
abolished because they are nothing but
income transfer programs masquerading
as tax credits. n
27
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book review
Origins of the Law

This three-volume set analyzes the origins of the law, including whether laws come from
God or man, and how modern law compares and contrasts to early law.
by James D. Heiser
Historical and Theological Foundations of Law, by John Eidsmoe, Powder

Springs, Georgia: Tolle Lege Press, 2012,
1,417 pages.
he recent publication of a threevolume work entitled Historical

and Theological Foundations of
Law may seem an unlikely prospect for
capturing a large readership, but for constitutional conservatives, John Eidsmoes
work is likely to generate a great deal of
interest for years to come. Although many
readers may find a work that is over 1,400
pages to be a daunting read, the authors
mastery of his material keeps his readers
engaged and gives them an opportunity to
view modern questions of law and governance with a context that spans the length
and breadth of the globe, and weighs 5,000
years of human experience when considering the challenges that confront citizens in
these latter days of the American Republic.
It has become the academic fashion in
recent generations to studiously avoid discussions of the influence of theology on
the rise and fall of nations, and the role of
theology in forming a nations laws. Even
when theology is considered, a Marxist interpretation usually predominates in
such discussions; theology is interpreted
in terms of economic factors, and theology,
law, and human history itself are assumed
to be part of an evolutionary process. It is
this assumption that Eidsmoe unflinchingly
confronts, unabashedly maintaining that
the ultimate Source of all true law is God.
At the heart of Eidsmoes work is what
the author refers to as the underlying
question: Was man originally polytheistic or monotheistic? Did ancient societies
begin with polytheism and evolve toward
monotheism, or did they begin with an
original monotheism and degenerate into
polytheism? For Eidsmoe, the underlying
question centers on the origin of law: Did
the law at its most fundamental level

develop (evolve), or was it revealed? As
the author notes in his conclusion:
The most important issue in jurisprudence today is whether law has a
super-human source, or whether law
is simply the creation of men. As this
question is answered, our aspiration
to freedom and our home for justice
hang in the balance.
If law is only man-made, then law
can change as men change, or rather,
as the whims of those who rule over
men change. There are no limits to
government power, other than those
that men themselves impose, and
those are subject to abrogation as
the powerful see fit. The concept of
human rights is then meaningless:
man has no unalienable rights given
by a Higher Source than man, but
only negotiable privileges that the
State gives and that the State can take
away. And the concept of an unjust
law becomes meaningless....
If we agree that there is a Higher
Authority and a Higher Law, we may
still disagree among ourselves as to

what that Law is and as to how it
should be applied. But without a recognition of a Higher Authority, reasoned discussion and appeals to authority become meaningless, because
then it is not the best reason that will
prevail, but the mightiest fist.
The concept behind Historical and Theological Foundations of Law is quite similar to that which the late Russell Kirk explored in his last major work, The Roots
of American Order (1991). Kirk traced
the American Order to its foundations in
the laws of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and evaluated the way in which the
Western, and eventually the American, understanding of justice, law, and order grew
from those roots. Eidsmoe cites Kirks
work on several occasions, but it is clear
that the end result of Eidsmoes research
is a far more comprehensive analysis of
the origins and development of law than
is found even in Kirks writings.
Eidsmoes three volumes are divided
along those lines which have become common since the Renaissance: Ancient Wis29
book review
since 1500 to reform the legal
system that had been inheritEidsmoe evaluates both the laws of
ed from the Medieval period
major ancient civilizations Egypt,
(Volume III).
As noted above, the first
Mesopotamia, Persia, India, and China
volume of Historical and
and also civilizations of the new
Theological Foundations of
Law begins with an analysis
world, including the Polynesians,
of the divine origin of law
Incans, Mayans, Aztecs, and even the
upheld by a variety of legal
systems from antiquity to the
Cheyenne and Iroquois Indians.
early modern era. Eidsmoe
evaluates both the laws of
dom (Volume I), Classical and Medieval major ancient civilizations Egypt, Mes(Volume II), and Reformation and Colonial opotamia, Persia, India, and China and
(Volume III). It has become common since also civilizations of the new world, inthe time of Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202 cluding the Polynesians, Incans, Mayans,
A.D.) to divide human history into three Aztecs, and even the Cheyenne and Iroquois
ages, and Eidsmoes work generally Indians. Eidsmoes discussion of the latter
conforms to the usual division of Classical civilizations is quite brief, but his work is
Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Renaissance. a significant advance over Kirks Roots of
Each of Eidsmoes three volumes is divided American Order, which does not include
into two books, with Volume I divided be- any such consideration. Eidsmoes examitween Ancient Legal Systems and Laws nation of such civilizations is not tangenof the Ancient Hebrews, Volume II evalu- tial, nor simply antiquarian. Rather, he is
ating Classical Legal Systems and The addressing the broader human understandCommon Law, and the last volume divided ing of law and its origins, seeking a unity
between Constitutionalism and Spread- of the conception of law in antiquity that is
ing Constitutionalism. The sweep of the not present in current thought. But this does
three volumes may also be summarized in not mean that Eidsmoe fails to connect the
terms of an evaluation of the divine origins thought of antiquity with the practices of the
of law (Volume I), the interaction between modern age; thus, for example, he notes in
the biblical teaching and Roman and vari- passing when discussing the Persians:
ous national laws (Volume II), and efforts
by religious reformers and philosophers
John Adams declared that, The very
definition of a republic is an empire

of laws, and not of men. Americans
commonly interpret that phrase to
mean that no one, not even the President, is above the law. That bedrock
principle of American constitutionalism has a forerunner in the laws of
the Medes and the Persians.
Eidsmoe does not believe that the republican form of government that existed
among the Iroquois had a direct influence
on the formation of the American Republic, but he treats their civilization with respect and commends the wisdom of both
the Cheyenne and the Iroquois:
From the Cheyenne we can learn
much, particularly the value of freedom, the price of honor, and ways the
functions of government can be performed by nongovernmental entities
like the warrior societies. We might
learn from their ability to instill
honor, integrity, and chastity in their
people and to preserve order without
the use of capital punishment.
And from the Iroquois Confederacy we learn that it is possible for
nations to join voluntarily in a confederacy that balances the power
of large tribes and small tribes, that
gives authority to central leadership
while preserving the interdependence
of each tribe, and that even balances
power between men and women.
Throughout the first half of Volume I,
Eidsmoe includes an evaluation of each
civilization, seeking a monotheistic basis
for their theology, and the author is more
successful in this endeavor than one might
otherwise anticipate. Demonstrating the
primacy of monotheism is an important
point for Eidsmoes thesis because he
views law as something that is divinely
bestowed polytheism and degenerating
notions of the law (including, in his assessment, a multiplication of death penalty
offenses) are two things that are inextricably joined together.
If the ancient Gentile legal systems are
the foundation for Eidsmoe, the ancient
Hebrew law is the cornerstone. The authors education in both law and theology
is called upon in this section; he is particularly adamant in demonstrating the ex-
30
tensive use to which American courts have

historically put the Old Testament law, and
he provides an extensive list of cases in
which the courts have directly cited the
Ten Commandments in support of their
decisions. (It is worth observing that
Eidsmoe is senior counsel and resident
scholar for the Foundation for Moral Law,
an organization that was established to defend Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in
his fight to keep the Ten Commandments
in the Alabama Judicial Building.)
As noted previously, Volume II is divided
between The Structure: Classical Legal
Systems and The Centerpiece: The Common Law. The first portion traces the history of Greek and Roman law and the way
in which the classical legal tradition shaped
the law of the Holy Roman Empire and
Roman Catholic canon law. Eidsmoe emphasizes the debt that Western civilization
owes to the legal minds of Greek and Latin
antiquity, but when it comes to Roman history, he focuses on the Roman Republic,
and not the empire: The Framers of the
American Constitution saw features to admire in Rome. But their admiration was reserved for the old Roman Republic and its
defenders, not the Empire and its Caesars.
Still, Eidsmoes preferences do not unduly
intrude on his review of the legal history
of the Roman Empire, and his summary of
legal developments that occurred over the
course of centuries is sufficiently detailed
to be edifying, without becoming simply
overwhelming.
The author concludes his examination of Classical Legal Systems with
a 60-page examination of The Islamic
Alternative. As is typical of the overall
work, Eidsmoes treatment of the history
of Islam and the structure of its theological and legal systems of thought is quite
fair. In the final analysis, the description of
Islam as an alternative (that is, an alternative to the history of Western theological
and legal thought) is apropos. As he notes,
the Islamic alternative provided Christians with a point of comparison:
The Crusades fostered a form of
European cooperation unknown in
history, even in the days of Rome....
For the first time in history, the
people of Europe began to think of
themselves as Europeans.
And they were united in their comwww.TheNewAmerican.com
mon Christian faith and their common opposition to Islam. Increasingly, Christians began to think in terms
of Christendom, a common people,
a common territory, and a common
culture, to be ruled by Christian rulers, infused with Christian culture,
and defended by Christian soldiers.
It is against the background of such a conception of Europe and Christendom that
Eidsmoe explores The Centerpiece: The
Common Law. Again, in comparison to
Russell Kirk, whose primary emphasis in
examining the Common Law was to turn
to the expression of that law in English
history, Eidsmoe devotes chapters not
only to Anglo-Saxon and Norman influence, but to that of the Celtic and Norse
peoples, as well. Eidsmoes evaluation of
The Viking Influence is worthy of particular note, as it is dominated neither by
romanticism nor a cartoonish revulsion
for Viking raiders. His detailed examination of the Icelandic judicial system is
thorough and is well-integrated into the
themes of the development of common
law in other nations.
Contrasting common-law traditions with
those of the classical legal systems given
expression in fixed legal codes, the author
tackles a vital point of his overall argument:
Common law operates on the presumption
that it is connected to an objectively real
set of legal principles that have their source
in an eternal and unchanging God.... Without that belief, common law degenerates
into the subjective opinion of a judge who
believes that he himself is the source of law,
and we are left with judge-made law masquerading as common law. Common law
was common to all the ancient peoples and
takes on a more definite form in the context
of Europe and Christendom; the arrival of
the Christian faith among the peoples of
Northern Europe brought the common law
a new depth and, as a result, the common
law became a bulwark for the rights of the
people in the face of tyrannical government;
e.g., In the 1500s the Tudor kings ruled as
tyrants, but while doing so even they outwardly respected and even strengthened the
institutions of the common law. It was this
bulwark of the common law that Eidsmoe
believes found a champion in Martin Luther, a new champion of the common law.
Volume III is divided into two books:
The Pinnacle: Constitutionalism, and

The Beacon: Spreading Constitutionalism. Eidsmoes evaluation of constitutionalism begins with the Reformation, and includes an examination of the
writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin on matters of common law and the
relationship between church and state,
and the influence that their writings had
throughout Europe and especially in
England. Nearly all of the 10 constitutional philosophers the author discusses
were Protestants; Eidsmoe presents them
as men who were positioned to ascertain
the weaknesses of the Greek and Roman
legal systems and of the canon law; the
legal philosophers heard echoes of Eden
and called the world back to this ancient
Law of Nature as the basis for modern
law and the guarantor of modern liberty.
A committed Americanist, Eidsmoe
upholds the American Republic as a
shining city on a hill, and ends the final
portion of his work with the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the election
of George Washington as president of the
convention: As the Convention, the culmination of thousands of years of history
and untold years of accumulated wisdom,
began, he [Washington] told the delegates, Let us raise a standard to which
the wise and honest may repair. The
event is in the hand of God. Subscribing to Washingtons sentiment, Eidsmoe
concludes his work on that note. It is an
inescapable conclusion that Eidsmoe is
prepared to passionately defend the thesis
that the American Republic is the product
of the long chain of legal and theological
wisdom that has come before it. Still, a
strength of Eidsmoes careful research is
that one need not agree with every aspect
of his analysis to find his labors to be of
tremendous value.
The authors careful pursuit of his various themes holds together a work of vast
scope. Each chapter is followed by a series
of questions that give the reader presumably a student the opportunity to
review that which has been covered in that
chapter, and to emphasize those points that
are of greatest importance in Eidsmoes
plan for the overall work. Committing the
time to read a work of such scale is no
minor endeavor, but the reader will find
there is much to be gleaned from careful
study of Eidsmoes three volumes. n
31
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THE GOODNESS OF AMERICA
Pay It Forward
Homeless man Billy Ray Harris of Kansas
City, Missouri, found a platinum and diamond engagement ring that had been accidentally dropped into his cup of change by
a woman who gave him some cash. Though
Harris certainly could have swapped the
ring for much-needed money, he instead
returned the ring to its rightful owner.
Yahoo News reported that the owner
of the ring, Sarah Darling, had put her
engagement ring in her change purse because it was bothering her finger. When
she saw Harris on the street in early February, she decided to give him some of her
loose change. She did not notice that her
ring was missing until the following day.
She went back to the same street where
she met Harris the previous day and asked
him if he had her ring. He did, and gave it
back to her.
My grandfather was a reverend. He
raised me from the time I was 6 months
old, and thank the good Lord. Its a blessing, but I do still have some character,
Harris told KCTV5 last week.
Darling and her husband were so grateful that they gave Harris all the cash they
had on them, approximately $60. It
seemed like a miracle, recalled Darling.
I thought for sure there was no way I
would get it back.
But to Darlings husband, Bill Krejci,
the $60 was not enough. After days of seeing their story picked up by various news
outlets, Krejci, a Web designer, decided
that he wanted to do more for Harris. My
wife was interviewed, and I noticed that
on some websites people were asking
how they could help Billy Ray, Krejci
said. Thats when I got the idea to start
the campaign.
Krejci went to the website GiveFoward
and started a page where donations can
be collected for Harris over the course of
the next 90 days. The idea was maybe to
come up with a couple hundred dollars,
something nice for him, Krejci said. But
now were talking about an amount that
could really make a difference.
The pages goal was to raise $1,000 but
after just a few days, the page had gained
much more traction than anyone could
have ever predicted. The page has received
nearly $182,000 in donations, and is not

scheduled to close until May 15.
The page has not only been flooded by
donations, but by comments as well.
One comment came from the Young
family, who donated $250 to Harris. They
wrote, This story was on CNN and it was
touching that someone with so little was so
thoughtful and understanding.... This was
a unique opportunity to celebrate a good
news story and act of kindness.
According to Krejci, it is not very difficult to understand why there has been such
an outpouring of support for Harris. Its
a nice, positive thing thats different from
all the negative news you normally hear,
he said.
Perhaps even better than the raised
money, the storys media coverage has
helped Billy Ray reunite with his family.
According to the Huffington Post, Billy
Rays sister Robin first saw him on TV:
When I turned my head, I recognized the name, and I turned back
around and I looked at the picture
again, and it was my brother, Harris sister, Robin, told TODAY.com,
referring to a news report she had
seen about her sibling. I called and
I said, Thats my brother. Ive been
looking for him for 16 years.
Robin, who lives in Texas, has since put
Harris in touch with their other siblings
and family members. Through Robin,
Billy Rays older brother Edwin was able
to contact his brother and talk to him on
the phone for 45 minutes. The family is
planning to gather for a reunion over the
summer, reported the Huffingon Post.
Blog posts on the GiveForward fundraising page indicate that Harris is no longer living on the street and has even been
doing some work as a roadie for a band. I
think in our world, we often just jump to
the worst conclusion. It just makes you
realize there are good people out there,
Darling told KCTV5.
Valentines Day Kindness

When Carlos and Barbara Landeros of
Vallejo, California, discovered a bag full
of credit cards, papers, and money in a

parking lot in San Francisco, they did not
hesitate to do the right thing.
The Landeroses were visiting San Francisco for a romantic Valentines Day dinner, reported NBCBayArea.com, when
they decided to take a walk across the majestic Golden Gate Bridge. That is when
Barbara spotted a camera bag. They expected the owner would return to the bag,
but waited nearby to ensure that it was not
stolen.
When nearly an hour passed, however,
and no one returned for the bag, Barbara
decided to check what was inside.
That is when she saw the $11,000.
I got nervous at first, it could be drug
money, she told NBCBayArea.com.
The couple immediately decided to turn
the bag over to the police, who were seemingly surprised by the couples deed. The
policeman who took their report told the
couple, Good for you guys. Im proud of
you.
Detectives used the credit cards to track
down the bags owner, a Chinese tourist
named Mark. As it turns out, the cash had
not belonged solely to Mark, but to several other families with whom he had been
traveling, reported Yahoo News.
Mark was understandably stunned and
relieved when the bag was returned. He
made a number of efforts to contact the Landeroses and thank them for their good deed.
Mark first attempted to call the couple,
but had the wrong number. He then drove
to their home to thank them in person, but
they were not home. Eventually, he managed to reach them via phone once he was
able to clarify their number. As a sign of
his gratitude, Mark reportedly mailed a
check to the couple as a reward.
Meanwhile, the entire incident prevented the couple from having their Valentines Day dinner. According to Yahoo
News, the couple ended up in traffic and
had an impromptu dinner for two at McDonalds.
But while their Valentines Day meal
may not have been ideal, the couple is
happy to have helped. My heart is rested
now because the people got their money
and their bag, Barbara said. n
Raven Clabough
33
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Businesses and their jobs are fleeing California at breakneck

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HISTORY Past and Perspective
The Seventeenth:
The Worst of All Amendments?
The 17th Amendment, putting the election of U.S. senators in the citizens hands, instead
of the state legislatures, was meant to empower citizens. It had the opposite effect.
by Jack Kenny
illiam Jennings Bryan, thrice a

losing candidate for president of
the United States, enjoyed a day
of triumph as secretary of state early in the
presidency of Woodrow Wilson. On May
31, 1913, Bryan signed the proclamation
declaring the 17th Amendment, requiring
direct election of U.S. senators, duly ratified and incorporated into the Constitution
of the United States. Bryan had long been
in the forefront of the battle for the amendment, as congressman, U.S. senator, and
presidential candidate. Foreshadowing
Franklin D. Roosevelts campaign against
the horse-and-buggy provisions of an
18th-century Constitution, Bryan insisted
the progress of communications by the end
of the 19th century had endowed the common people with sufficient information
to make their own judgments as to who
should represent them in the U.S. Senate.
What with our daily newspapers and

our telegraph facilities we need not delegate our powers, declared the Great Commoner. Whatever reasons the Founders may
have had for requiring election by state
legislatures, today under present conditions, those statesmen and patriots would
undoubtedly be of another opinion.
Not a Representative Body
Yet the role of the Senate in the basic structure of the Constitution was clearly not
to be a body representing the people. The
House of Representatives had that duty.
The United States Senate was to represent
the states in the federal government, jealously guarding the prerogatives of the states
against encroachments from Washington.
Todd Zywicki, a George Mason University
law professor, has been advocating repeal
of the amendment for more than 20 years,
arguing that it has broken down the constitutional structure designed to protect
the rights and interests of the states and

supplanted it with what he describes as a
master-servant relationship between the
federal and state governments. Stating his
case for repeal in the November 15, 2010
issue of National Review, Zywicki wrote:
Before the Seventeenth Amendment,
the now-widespread Washington
practice of commandeering the states
for federal ends through such actions as unfunded mandates, laws
requiring states to implement voter-registration policies that enable
fraud (such as the Motor Voter law
signed by Bill Clinton), and the provisions of Obamacare that override
state policy decisions would have
been unthinkable. Instead, senators
today act all but identically to House
members, treating federalism as a
matter of political expediency rather
than constitutional principle.
35
HISTORY
Past and Perspective
The appointment of senators by state legislators, ZyThe 17th Amendment has broken down
wicki has written, was one
the constitutional structure designed to
of the least controversial
elements of the new Conprotect the rights and interests of the states
stitution. Popular election
and supplanted it with what he describes
of senators was proposed at
the Constitutional Convenas a master-servant relationship between
tion, but received almost no
the federal and state governments.
support.
The tide in favor of direct election, overwhelming
Power to the Judges
by 1912, began as a modest ripple in the
Ironically, an amendment advanced as a 1820s. Rep. Henry R. Storrs, a Federalboon to the power of the people has had ist from New York, proposed an amendthe effect of concentrating more power in ment for popular election for Senators in
the hands of the unelected branch of the 1826, but the bill went nowhere. Similar
federal government known as the judi- amendments were offered and tabled in
ciary. Since senators no longer see it as 1829 and 1855. But soon after the Civil
their duty to guard the boundaries between War, the cause was taken up by an Amerifederal and state authority, those jurisdic- can president, albeit an unpopular one.
tional disputes have repeatedly landed in Andrew Johnson, who was impeached for
the laps of the judges. From the New Deal other reasons, called for direct elections
of the 1930s to the ObamaCare decision for reasons he thought so palpable that
last June, the Supreme Court has time and no explanation was necessary.
again decided whether the federal government may tell a farmer how much wheat he Scandals and Deadlocks
may grow, legislate gun-free zones around By the last decade of the 19th century, the
schools, address domestic spousal abuse populist crusade and the nascent Progresthrough the Violence Against Women Act, sive movement had coalesced around the
or burden a citizen with an additional tax promotion of greater democracy and
for failure to purchase health insurance.
the elimination of political corruption.
AP Images
Learning from history: Todd Zywicki, now a professor of law at George Mason University in Fairfax,
Va., deplores the master-servant relationship between the federal and state governments.
36
In an essay in The Atlantic, University of

Baltimore School of Law Professor Garrett Epps described the state legislatures
of that era as open markets for moneyed
interests to buy votes for favored Senate
candidates.
Whenever a senatorial election occurred, wrote Epps, railroad barons,
oilmen and monopolists descended on
the state capitol and spread their cash like
butter across the lawmakers outstretched
palms. The famous muckraking journalists of the Progressive era contributed
to the enthusiasm for political reform with
stories of bribery and corruption in the nations State Houses. The cure for the ills
of democracy, reformers argued, was
more democracy. Convinced the problem
was less with the people in office than the
way they were elected, they sought to reform the Constitution.
Critics of the amendment have argued
that much-publicized incidents of corruption were less a cause than an excuse for
the campaign for direct elections. Writing
in the journal Humanitas in 1996, historian C.H. Hoebeke noted:
The intrigues, improprieties and illegalities would be difficult to measure precisely, particularly because
an election that was unpopular was
often portrayed as the result of underhandedness. In states where senatorial primaries succeeded only in
producing a number of local mandates, the legislators were forced to
compromise, and their choice was
usually unpopular with any constituency that did not have its way.
But it is a matter of record that the
first case of bribery reported in the
election of senators did not occur
until 1872. From then until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment a period when the independence of state legislators was losing
ground to the popular primary the
number of allegations of corrupt
elections rose tofifteen. Considering the extent to which the process
of Senate elections had already been
popularized, the reformers assertions that they had become more
corrupt did not exactly support the
case for popularizing the process
even further.
Populists and Progressives, Unite!
The National Peoples, or Populist, Party

included a plank calling for the popular
election of U.S. Senators in its platform
starting in 1892. The Democratic Party
followed suit in 1896. Progressive Republicans, including the ever-popular Theodore Roosevelt, also backed the idea.
State party platforms joined the chorus,
even as a growing number of states had effectively achieved their goal with, as Hoebeke noted, primary elections. A common
method was to hold primary elections for
U.S. Senate and then ask each candidate
for the state legislature to pledge that he
would vote for the winner of his partys
primary.
In the fateful year of 1912, Arizona and
New Mexico were admitted to the Union,
and both were expected to join the rapidly
growing number of states calling for a
constitutional convention for the purpose
Library of Congress
On the whole, most of the muckraking exposs of Senate elections turned

out to be nothing more than good copy,
wrote Hoebeke, who also pointed out the
internal contradiction in the reformers
argument. If the people had been electing easily corruptible state legislators,
what reason was there to believe they
would do a better job of electing honest
U.S. senators? The proposed remedy, he
wrote, consisted of transferring Senate
elections from the corrupt few to the
incompetent many.
Another argument against election
of senators by the legislatures was the
number of legislative deadlocks that occurred, leaving Senate seats vacant for
long periods of time. The deadlocks, in
fact, became more frequent after Congress passed a law in 1866 requiring the
election of each senator by a majority,
not merely a plurality, of his states legislature. In his 2001 book, Federalism,
the Supreme Court and the Seventeenth
Amendment, political science professor
Ralph A. Rossum noted there were 71
such deadlocks from 1885 to 1912, resulting in 17 Senate seats going unfilled
for an entire legislative session or more.
Deadlock was most evident and embarrassing in Delaware; it was represented
by only one Senator in three Congresses
and was without any Senator from 1901
to 1903.
Vote on everything: Sen. Jonathan Bourne of Oregon wanted Rousseauism, in the application of
popular sovereignty, on a national scale.
of passing an amendment to provide for

the direct election of senators. By that time
27 states had already issued the call, just
five fewer than would be needed to bring
such a convention about. Since the Article
V provision concerning a constitutional
convention in no way limits the nature or
number of amendments that may be proposed, progressives in Congress, pushing
for an amendment, were joined by conservatives fearful of a runaway convention
that might alter the Constitution in ways
unforeseen. Sending an amendment to
the states seemed the safer route. Yet the
amendment, when placed before the Congress, did face opposition from a vociferous minority. The irony of senators voting
to discard the means by which they had
been elected to their high office was not
lost on Idaho Republican Weldon Heyburn, who issued the following challenge
to his Senate colleagues:
I should like to see some Senator rise
in his seat and say that the legislature
of his state which elected him was not
competent, was not fit, was not honest
enough to be trusted. Then I should be
interested to see him go back and say
I am a candidate for reelection.
Rousseauism Triumphant
Yet the amendment passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 64 to 24 in the Senate and 238 to 39 (with 110 not voting)
in the House. The temper of the time was
not amenable to conservative persuasion,
reflecting as it did the idealization of the
all-conquering general will espoused by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, intellectual father
of the French Revolution. Rousseau had
argued that all questions facing the body
politic should be decided according to the
general will or consensus among all the
people in the nation. Senator Jonathan
Bourne of Oregon freely acknowledged
that the Founders had not planned what
he and his Progressive colleagues were
after, namely Rousseauism, in the application of popular sovereignty, on a nationalscale.
In 1908, 110 members of the U.S.
House had pledged support of an amendment to establish a national referendum.
While the states were holding ratification
debates on the 17th Amendment, members of the Judiciary Committee of the
U.S. Senate proposed the popular recall
of federal judges. Add to these, wrote
Hoebeke, the various third-party platforms that have made a range of demands,
37
HISTORY
Past and Perspective
place increased helpings of
federal largess at the serSince senators no longer see it as their
vice of their respective clients. Waves of new federal
duty to guard the boundaries between
programs would be enacted
federal and state authority, those
in succeeding decades that
undermined the authority of
jurisdictional disputes have repeatedly
state governments. As late as
landed in the laps of the judges.
1930, the governor of New
York could still say that a
from the Socialists call for abolishing the great many vital problems of governPresident and Senate to the Progressive ment remained, by the nature of the fedPartys plank for finding a more easy and eral Constitution, outside the purview of
expeditious method of amending the Fed- the national government. They included
eral Constitution, and the predilection for the conduct of the banks, of insurance,
treating everyday political issues as sys- of business, of agriculture, of education,
temic constitutional weaknesses becomes of social welfare, and a dozen other important features, he observed. Washingmore readily visible.
The amendment was passed by Con- ton must not be encouraged to interfere
gress on May 13, 1912 and then sent to in those areas, the governor cautioned.
the states. By April 8, 1913, it was ratified
by the required three-fourths of the states
to become part of the Constitution.
The governor was Franklin D.

Roosevelt, who was elected president two
years later and launched a New Deal
program that would, over the next several
years, bring the federal government into
nearly all those areas. Among the most
controversial were the federal agriculture
programs aimed at raising farm prices by
reducing food supplies, an effort critics
described as an attempt to solve the problem of poverty in the midst of plenty by
getting rid of the plenty.
Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist,
No. 17, cited the supervision of agriculture and other concerns of a similar nature
as matters that are proper to be provided
for by local legislation [and] can never be
desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.
Though President Lincoln created the nations first Department of Agriculture in
The amendment changed the nature of

politics in America, though not entirely
in the manner hoped for by the reformers. The first direct election of senators,
in 1914, resulted in the reelection of every
incumbent re-nominated by his party. The
Senate remained largely a millionaires
club, and those who had hoped to cleanse
elections of the corrupting influence of
money had to be disappointed when the
cost of running a statewide election campaign for a seat on the worlds greatest
deliberative body became clear. They
would no doubt be shocked at current
campaign spending sprees, including the
more than $70 million in combined expenditures by Scott Brown and Elizabeth
Warren in last years Senate race in Massachusetts. Alliances with free-spending
lobbying organizations and charges of
election fraud have continued long after
the power brokers in the smoke-filled
rooms have been succeeded by armies
of campaign consultants, media advisors,
pollsters, and marketing experts to train
the candidate in the art of telling the people what the people want to hear.
With senators no longer accountable
to their state legislatures, lobbyists have
benefited from an economy of scale,
focusing on one national capital, rather
than 50 state capitals, in their efforts to
38
AP Images
What Changed?
Todays titans? Are Senate titans like Charles Schumer of New York and Vice President Joe
Biden better than the likes of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, who were chosen by their respective
state legislatures?
AP Images
Mouthpiece for change: Glenn Beck, radio and TV talk-show host, is among the 21st-century
advocates of repeal of the now 100-year-old 17th Amendment.
1862, the extent of federal involvement in

the production and sale of agricultural products was nothing like what it would become
in the New Deal and successive administrations. Today the federal government is involved in everything from our farms to our
health and education, along with our sex
lives (Viagra is covered by the prescription
drug benefit for seniors, and contraception
coverage is mandated under ObamaCare)
and preschool programs for toddlers.
The Founders established one house
of the federal legislature to be resistant to
pressures for hastily considered changes in
response to every crisis of the day, whether
real or imagined. Members of the upper
chamber would be chosen by popularly
elected legislators, chosen in theory at
least as persons of sound judgment and
integrity. The senators would themselves
be men inclined to consider coolly and
dispassionately whether legislation advanced by the House of Representatives
would be in harmony with the interests of
a frugal and stable republic or would open
a Pandoras box of raids upon the nations
treasury and assaults upon the governing
prerogatives of the states. A statement attributed to our nations first president compares the cooling role of the practice of
pouring tea into a saucer. Even so, said
Washington, we pour legislation into the
senatorial saucer to cool it.
Election of U.S. senators by their respective state legislatures, Madison wrote
in The Federalist, No. 14, would serve to

remind the senators that the national government is not to be charged with the
whole power of making and administering
laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain
enumerated objects, which concern all the
members of the republic, but which are not
to be attained by the separate provisions
of any. The state governments would
otherwise retain their due authority and
activity.
Whatever merit was claimed for the
amendment a century ago, few would
argue today that it has produced a Senate
of superior quality.
Whether the modern titans of the Senate such as Trent Lott, Bill Frist, Harry
Reid, and the late Ted Kennedy are superior to Webster, Clay, and Calhoun is to
some extent a matter of taste, Zywicki
conceded. But it is likely that reinstating the original mode of selection would
change the type of individuals selected
and it is not implausible to think that the
change would be positive.
A Zeal to Repeal
While Zywickis is no doubt a minority

view, the Tea Party uprising of the past
few years has inspired some office holders today to at least consider the potential
benefits of repealing the 17th Amendment.
Republican Mike Lee, elected to the Senate from Utah in 2010, said he would favor
repeal of the amendment.
We need one chamber of Congress in

which states will be represented as states,
Lee said on Fox News shortly after his
election. In Atlanta, the Georgia legislature in early February had inched ahead,
Slate magazine reported, on a resolution
calling for the repeal of the amendment.
The resolution declares the original purpose of the United States Senate was to
protect the sovereignty of the states from
the federal government.
Conservative commentator Glenn
Beck has zeroed in on the amendment
as a contributing factor in the rise of an
overbearing federal government in the
20th century. Its adoption remains One
of the dumbest things we ever did, said
former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Speaking at Texas Tech University in
November 2010, Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia said one change he would
like to see to the Constitution would be to
change it back to the original method of
electing senators.
The 17th Amendment has changed
things enormously, Scalia said, adding,
We changed that in a burst of progressivism in 1913, and you can trace the decline of so-called states rights throughout
the rest of the 20th century. Retired New
Jersey judge and Fox News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano has called
the amendment the only part of the Constitution that is itself unconstitutional.
That was an assault, an invasion on
the infrastructure of constitutional government, said Napolitano, viewing the
amendment through historys lens. Even
kings in Europe had to satisfy the princes
and barons around them. And thats how
they lost their power, or thats how their
power was tempered. Today, he said,
Congress believes it doesnt have to satisfy anybody. Its only recognized restraint
is whatever it can get away with.
Empowering the federal government
to take an unlimited amount of anyones
income ( the 16th Amendment) and to
make the U.S,. Senate a tribune for the
genral will of the moment or day (the
17th) seems a strange way to subject the
government to the peoples control. The
two amendments combined have driven
a stake through the heart of a republic
founded on the principle of limited, constitutional government. n
39
... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Feisty Female
WBIR reported February 7 that an octogenarian from the Knoxville, Tennessee, area
used her gun to defend herself against an
intruder. Eighty-six-year-old Louise Howard of Bulls Gap called police when she
observed a suspicious car in front of her
house and then heard the sound of someone attempting to break into her home. A
stranger successfully entered the home and
encountered Howard. The female intruder
told Howard that she wouldnt hurt her
and was only there to steal some money.
Howard told WBIR, Im not the type to
scare.... But I have always said, if somebody broke into my home, Im going to get
them. Howard always keeps a gun under
her pillow, and she was prepared to defend herself. Howard pulled her pistol and
pointed it right at the female intruder. When
the intruder failed to halt, Howard fired the
weapon, grazing the burglar, later identified by the Hawkins County Sheriffs Office as 36-year-old Molena Nichole Dowell
of Morristown. Dowell was wounded but
was still able to struggle with Howard and
wrestle the gun away from her. Dowell took
the gun along with Howards purse, which
contained all of her keys, some cash and
credit cards, and her wedding ring from her
late husband.
Dowell eventually tried to pawn the ring
at a pawnshop, which led officers to her.
She confessed to the crime. Dowell was
charged with aggravated robbery, burglary,
and theft of property over $500.
Good for All

Allstar Tactical (AT), a Rochester, N.Y.based business, specialized in tactical
firearms and their related equipment, and
eventually began to develop its own line of
AR-15/M16/M4 rifles, components, and
accessories. AT sold its products to civilians and law enforcement, as well as to the
various military branches.
Business was great. Then along came
Governor Andrew Cuomos draconian
SAFE Act. Company President Mike
Centola issued a press release on February 25 that explained ATs stance on
the recent gun control legislation. The
company has decided that it will apply
40
EXERCISING THE RIGHT
the strict gun control laws to both civilian

and government customers. The heinous
NY SAFE act effectively prevents us from
selling complete rifles to New York State
citizens.... Due to the current legislation in
New York and any states that pass similar
legislation, effective March 1st 2013, Allstar Tactical will apply all current state and
local legislation applicable to civilians, to
all government agencies, including but not
limited to, local and state law enforcement,
first responders, sheriff departments, and
federal agencies. In addition, we are suspending all [law-enforcement and military
discounts] on our products in those states
in which our second amendment rights are
being infringed upon. Many other gun
companies have taken a similar stance.
vived the ordeal, especially considering the

perpetrator showed no hesitation to shoot.
If my husband hadnt shot him, he would
have been shot, Anna said.
John felt that the young attacker left
them no other option. I didnt want it to
come to that, John told the Inquirer, but
we had to defend ourselves.
Police sources say the shooting appears
to be justified and do not expect to press
charges against the deli owner. The entire
event was captured on the delis surveillance cameras. Police have not named the
gunman but did say he had prior arrests
and may have been involved with other
robberies.
No Other Option
Buffalo, New York-based libertarian activist and attorney Jim Ostrowski recently
gave a speech at a local Second Amendment rally. The text of the speech, published on LewRockwell.com, contained
the following brilliant statement:
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a

deli owner was forced to use deadly force
on February 6. Fifty-five-year-old John
has owned Annas Deli for more than
22 years, and works in the store on a daily
basis with his 54-year-old wife, Anna.
Their last names were withheld owing to
the nature of the crime. Anna was working
at the counter when a 19-year-old armed
robber burst into the business shortly after
6 p.m. The criminal pointed his gun directly at Anna and demanded cash in an
obscenity-laced tirade. The criminal went
behind the counter, pointed the gun right
at Annas chest, forced her to her knees,
and ordered her to open the cash register.
Fortunately, John had a pistol of his own,
and he retrieved it when he heard Anna
screaming from the front of the store. The
thug actually fired his weapon at John as
soon as he saw him emerge from the back,
but John returned fire, letting go with three
shots, one of which hit the burglar in the
chest. The suspect died on the scene due to
the severity of the injury. John opened his
business the next day like nothing had ever
happened. As he explained to the Inquirer,
We want to show that were not leaving.
The neighborhood has responded with an
outpouring of support for the family business. They hug us, Anna told the Inquirer.
Everybody has been so good to us. She
was grateful that she and her husband sur-
Progressives Love Guns
Progressives dont hate guns; they love

guns. They love them so much they
want to be the only ones who have any.
They want a gun monopoly. Again, a
progressive is a person who has this
fantastic dream of creating a utopia
on earth by threatening people with
government guns if they dont comply with their utopian schemes. The
difference between progressives and
us is this. They want to use guns aggressively, to make peaceful people do
things they dont want to do. We wish
to use them only defensively, to stop
a government that gets out of control
and engages in mass murder, or systemically tramples the Bill of Rights.
The progressive state uses guns against
us on a daily basis to impose their will
on us. Yet, to my knowledge, not a
single Patriot has fired a gun back. We
have exercised remarkable restraint.
So, again, the government schools, the
politicians and the mainstream media
lie. The truly violent gun fanatics and
gun lovers are the progressive gun
grabbers, not us. n
Patrick Krey
Item: The Hill newspaper (Washington,

D.C.) for February 12 reviewed President
Obamas State of the Union speech: With
dozens of victims of gun violence looking
on in the House chamber, Obama asked
Congress to stage votes on proposals to
expand background checks on gun purchases, ban assault weapons and prohibit
high-capacity ammunition magazines.
The president acknowledged that
policymakers will never eliminate gun
violence altogether. But any progress on
that front, he argued, is worth the effort.
Item: Fox News for February 4 reported:
President Obama on Monday tried to undercut National Rifle Association leaders
and appeal directly to their membership.
The president, in a campaign-style
stop in Minnesota commented: The
overwhelming majority of gun owners
think (universal background checks are) a
good idea, Obama said, referring to recent polling that shows most gun owners
support background checks at gun shows
and for private sales.
Item: The New York Times for February 27
editorialized about requiring background
checks for buyers in private gun sales. As
the Times put it: Gun-control groups made
it their top priority, saying it would end a
loophole that now allows 40 percent of sales
to take place without oversight.
The Times said the dark and nonsensical fantasy that the United States government will one day transform itself into a
jackbooted fascist state and seize American
weaponry has long been peddled by the
gun lobby to stir up donations to its cause.
This, said the editors, is the reason the
federal background check system is not allowed to keep records of people who are approved to buy guns, since advocates claim
that doing so would lead to a national gun
registry and thus a road map for the storm
troopers to know whose door to kick down
in their rabid search for a firearm.
Correction: Obviously every regulation
or change in the law isnt an inevitable
precursor to dictatorship. However, it is a
hallmark of all too many mocking proCall 1-800-727-TRUE to subscribe today!
AP Images
Assaulting Gun
Owners and Freedoms
Ban most pistols? If Obama had his way, military-style guns that are fast-shooting and able to take
high-capacity magazines would be banned. When banning so-called assault rifles doesnt eliminate
mass shootings, it is only logical that pistols would be next as most fit that description.
gressives these days to play fast and loose

with the freedoms of other people.
Consider what the reaction would be to
a U.S. senator who advised that Americans
need to set aside the pleasures of their First
Amendment rights for the good of the
general welfare. Can you imagine the
outcry? Perhaps even the New York Times
might be uncomfortable with that stance.
Yet, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
did just that with the Second Amendment
in February, and the silence in so-called
liberal circles was all but deafening. She
told MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell why she
wanted to impose a ban on certain semiautomatic weapons. Her prohibition bill is
a good one, she said, because there are no
background checks and such weapons are
easy to obtain.
Said the California senator: The mothers, the women, the men of America, have
to make a decision as to whether their personal pleasure is more important than the
general welfare.
Oh, but she cares. No doubt. But she
isnt worried about self-defense. Thats a
concern for hoi polloi. The double standard
irks Dr. Michael Brown, a radiologist who
is a member of the Doctors for Responsible
Gun Ownership. As he wrote in January:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California

Democrat, is about to introduce the
most restrictive weapons ban in American history. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of
New York has said that confiscation
may be an option. New York City
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is
apoplectic at the thought of revolting
peasants out there he cant control.
All of these politicians are protected
by armed guards who can use any
guns they wish, but they dont think
the public merits the same privileges.
Its a good thing that arrogance isnt a hate
crime, or prison doors would be slamming
shut on the haughty editors of the New
York Times. It cant happen here, they
scoff. Maybe. Or maybe not.
However, its easier to jeer if one
doesnt take heed of what is in the papers
own archives covering, for example, the
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
in Germany in 1938. This was immediately preceded by the confiscation of firearms. On November 8, 1938, the Times
reported from the German capital (Berlin Police Head Announces Disarming
of Jews was the headline the next day),
explaining:
41
The Berlin Police President, Count

Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police
activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had
been disarmed with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702
firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in
possession of weapons without valid
licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.
Of course, freedoms werent lost overnight. The Weimar Republic had passed
a firearm law in 1928 requiring extensive
police records on gun owners. The Nazis
built on that.
The New York Times and other promoters of more gun controls make reference
to evils of the gun show loophole. Yet,
most of the revealed wisdom about this
alleged loophole involves myths, exaggerations, or deliberate lies.
The 40-percent figure (which, given
the margin of error in the statistic, could
just as easily be called 30 percent) is
quite different from what the proponents
of control are claiming. When one subtracts gifts of guns and inheritances and
several other factors, you are left with the
not-so-startling piece of information that
around 3.9 percent of gun purchases were
made at gun shows. In 1994. Perhaps.
John Lott, former chief economist at
the United States Sentencing Commission and the author of More Guns, Less
Crime, laid out the details in National
Review Online in late January:
include family inheritances and gifts

as purchases, it is simply false.
The Brady Act background
checks currently prevent someone
who buys from a federally licensed
dealer from buying a gun if he has
a felony, or in many cases a misdemeanor conviction, or has been
involuntarily committed for mental
illness. Prior to Brady, federal law
merely required that people sign a
statement stating that they did not
have a criminal record or a history
of mental problems under threat of
perjury. Obamas 40 percent claim
makes it look like a lot of gun buyers
are avoiding these checks.
Actually, the number reported
was a bit lower, 36 percent, and
the true number of guns sold without check is closer to 10 percent.
More important, the number comes
from a 251-person survey on gun
sales two decades ago, early in the
Clinton administration. More than
three-quarters of the survey covered
sales before the Brady Act instituted mandatory federal background
checks on February 28, 1994. In addition, guns are not sold in the same
way today that they were sold two
decades ago.
In short, the loophole doesnt mean

much at all, though it is being used as
supposed proof to buttress the making of
major changes in how guns may be sold in
this country. Even the liberal Washington
Post has taken note of the misleading use
to which this figure has been subjected.
The would-be banners of weapons cant
even properly define the firearms they
want to outlaw, often falling back on terms
such as assault weapons, which evoke
(misleadingly and purposefully) images
of military machine-guns capable of full
automatic fire. However, even when the
assault term is used wrongly, it turns
out that less than two percent of all gun
crimes are committed with such weapons,
according to a comprehensive study by the
Congressional Research Service.
Emily Miller, senior opinion editor at
the Washington Times, has repeatedly
taken note of the administrations disingenuous campaign against the Second
Amendment. As she wrote on January 17,
the presidents radical agenda is emerging
now that he will not face the voters again.
This includes his many claims cloaked
with misleading phrases. For example:
Weapons designed for the theater of
war have no place in a movie theater,
the president said, deliberately confus-
Gun-control advocates have recently

been throwing around an impressive
new number. President Obama used
it , claiming: as many as 40 percent of guns are purchased without
a background check. Vice President
Biden and everyone from the New
York Times to the Wall Street Journal to USA Today repeatedly use
it. That fact provided the principal support for his first announced
gun-control proposal, universal
background checks. But unless you
42
ing the fully automatic weapons used

by our troops with the popular semiautomatic rifles available to civilians
that are rarely used in crimes. He
wants to reimpose the Clinton-era gun
ban that expired in 2004, even though
that law did not decrease crime, nor
did it prevent the 1999 shooting at
Columbine High School in Colorado.
The administration is throwing its
weight behind Senate legislation that
would limit pistol and rifle magazines
to 10 rounds, as if criminals werent
aware it only takes a second or two
to reload. Mr. Obama said high-capacity magazines have one purpose
to pump out as many bullets as possible, as quickly as possible, to do as
much damage, using bullets often designed to inflict maximum damage.
The White House also called for
a universal background check for
anyone trying to buy a gun. Since the
majority of states dont require registration of guns, it is unclear how the
White House can enforce this provision when one law-abiding American
sells or trades a gun privately with
another resident of the same state.
Criminals who obtain their guns off
the streets wont be calling the FBI to
perform a background check before
completing the transaction.
In reality, the White House is fully aware
that the crimes being used as a reason for
new restrictions would not likely be affected at all by the proposed changes.
A White Paper by the National Institute
of Justice, which handles research for the
Department of Justice, dated January 4,
2013, acknowledges that whatever success
might be obtained with universal background checks would depend, at least in
part, on also requiring gun registration.
Gun buybacks, says the memo, would not
be effective unless massive and coupled
with a ban.
In addition, an exemption for previously owned magazines would nearly eliminate any impact. The program would need
to be coupled with an extensive buyback of
existing large capacity magazines.
The Department of Justice has since argued that this was an unfinished review.
Translated, that means that its embarrassing findings were not supposed to see the
light of day.
Moreover, the assault weapons targeted by Senator Feinstein are simply not
used that often, relatively, in the commission of crimes. Writing in the National
Law Journal (NLJ) on February 11, Robert Levy offers some perspective, pointing
out that to ban popular semi-automatic
rifles just because they are equipped
with a pistol grip or some other attachment that has no effect on their lethality,
makes no sense whatsoever. FBI data for
2011 indicate that almost 13,000 people
were murdered with a weapon. Of those,
1,700 were killed with knives; almost 500
with hammers, bats, and clubs; and 728
by someones bare hands. Only 323 people
were killed with rifles of all types.
The fact that such restrictions dont work
as claimed is known but ignored by
proponents of controlling the population.
Levy, a former adjunct professor at Georgetown University, gets at the evidence. As he
pointed out in the NLJ:
The two most exhaustive studies on
gun control were conducted by the

National Academy of Sciences and
the Centers for Disease Control. Neither agency could be accused of favoring the gun lobby.
In 2004, the National Academy
reviewed 253 journal articles, 99
books and 43 government publications evaluating 80 gun-control
measures. Researchers could not
identify a single gun-control regulation that meaningfully reduced
violent crime, suicide, or accidents.
In 2003, the CDC reported on ammunition limits, restrictions on purchase, waiting periods, registration,
licensing, child access prevention
and zero-tolerance laws.
Conclusion: None of the laws demonstrably reduced gun violence.
So if violence is not going to be reduced,
even assuming that the administration and
its media echo-chamber can befuddle the
public and roll the Congress, what is the
actual target?
Unfortunately, the answer is painfully
obvious: It is our liberties that are in the
bulls-eye. n
William P. Hoar
43
THE LAST WORD

by Jack
Kenny
Narrow Is the Way to Defend Our Freedoms
hile searching for

a certain quotation
from Thomas Jefferson, I came across, somewhere on the vast information
highway called the Internet,
the familiar observation that
Mr. J favored a narrow interpretation of the powers of
Congress, as set forth in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
The statement implies, unmistakably, that the narrow
interpretation is but one of
many possible approaches.
It further implies, though a
bit more subtly, that it is far
from the best one. It was good
enough for Thomas Jefferson, of course, but he lived in the 18th
century. We moderns have learned how to better adapt the living document to the needs of our time. Contemporary culture
has so saturated us with the notion that broad is better than
narrow that it goes without saying.
The Constitution was presented to the people of the new republic as a document that required a narrow interpretation.
James Madison, for example, assured readers of the Federalist Papers that the powers delegated to the federal government
under the proposed Constitution were few and defined, while
those remaining with the states were numerous and indefinite.
(The Federalist, No. 45) Soon after the Constitution was ratified,
a Bill of Rights was added in the form of the first 10 amendments. The 10th did not leave much wiggle room for anything
broader than a narrow interpretation:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
the States respectively, or to the People.
Certainly the Anti-Federalists were skeptical. Those who opposed ratification included no less a liberty-loving patriot than
Patrick Henry. Opponents feared that the glib assurances from
the three amigos of the Federalist Papers would be forgotten
and a broader interpretation of the powers of Congress would
be imposed by simply stretching the necessary and proper, the
general welfare, or the interstate commerce clause to cover, essentially, all outdoors and much that goes on indoors as well.
Well, what they feared has come to pass, thanks to numerous
broad interpretations. To cite but one example, Nancy Pelosi,
then speaker of the House, was promoting the legislation known
as ObamaCare in 2009, when she was asked at a press conference where in the Constitution she found the power of Congress
44
to penalize Americans for not

buying health insurance.
Are you serious? she
asked. Are you serious? she
repeated. With that thoughtful response, she turned to
the next question. Later, she
responded in writing with
a lame invocation of the interstate commerce clause.
Since not buying something
is clearly not commerce,
many thought that was a long,
though not unprecedented,
stretch. Later, Chief Justice
John Roberts found the penalty fell within the taxing
power of Congress, though
the act itself says the charge
is a penalty, not a tax, and it was so understood by the Congress
that passed it.
Alas for the broad-minded, the Constitution names only four
crimes or offenses Congress has the power to penalize: counterfeiting, treason, piracy on the high seas, and offenses against
the law of nations. The crime of not buying health insurance
didnt make the cut.
We have now reached the point where it is alleged that the
Constitution, which nowhere touches upon the subject of marriage, requires a broad interpretation of legal matrimony. The
Obama administration and a number of states have joined a suit
against Californias Proposition 8, passed by referendum in
2008. After a long campaign, with no shortage of debate, California voters decided that marriage in the Golden State would
mean what it has universally meant for millennia: a union between a man and a woman. That is too narrow, say the plaintiffs
in the suit now before the U.S. Supreme Court, for it denies
equal protection of the laws to same-sex couples.
Bishop Fulton Sheen, the famous TV preacher of the 1950s,
zeroed in on the dilemma with mathematical precision. I am
free, he said, to draw a triangle if I give it three sides, but not,
in a stroke of broad-mindedness, 57 sides. Bishop Sheen held
to a narrow definition of triangle, without which the word
would have no meaning like the modern, broad-minded interpretation of marriage.
There is something about the modern mind that does not like
definitions, since definitions imply limitations. Narrow interpretations of the Constitution recognize limits on the powers
of the federal government. The broad view enlarges the rule of
government while narrowing the realm of freedom and the right
of self-government.
Blessed are the narrow of mind, for they shall be called defenders of liberty. n
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